LIBRARY 0FC0N6RESS. 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE 



THE 



REASOMBLENESS OF CHRISTIANITY 



By CHARLES NORDHOFF 

AUTHOR OF 

'politics for YOl-NG AMERICANS" " CAPE COD AND ALL ALONG SHORE' 

"the COMMUNISTIC SOCIETIES OF THE LTflTED STATES" ETC. 




NEW YORK 

HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 

1883 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1883, by 

Harper k Brothers, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



All rights reso'ved. 



The Library 
OF Congress 

WASHINGTON 



J 



TO PAEENTS AND TEACHERS. 



"Katueal Theology" has been defined as that 
department of study which treats of the existence 
and attributes of God as these are revealed to us in 
the world of nature. 

Many eminent men — not only theologians but 
scientists — have written treatises of natural theology, 
and the work of Paley, the most famous of this kind, 
was for a long period one of the books which young 
people were expected to read ; it was commonly used 
as a text-book in my own school-days. It is now 
thought to be out of date, and is no longer seen in 
schools, and not often in households ; but it remains, 
in my belief, a valuable, as it is certainly an in- 
teresting book, not only for youth, but for mature 
men and women. 

If I venture to offer here another book on N^atural 
Religion, this is because I have seen that Paley's 
and other well-known works, written before recent 
and very important discoveries and new theories in 
science, do not entirely meet the questions which 
not only our young people, but many of their 
thoughtful elders, nowadays ask. 



4 TO PARENTS AND TEACHERS. 

But I have also another reason for venturing upon 
this field, and it seems to me a very important one. 
Those whose thoughts are already interested in these 
questions — of God and a Future Life — form but a 
part of the community. There is another, and not 
a small part, which takes little or no interest in such 
thoughts. The burden and pressure of life are so 
great, the temptations to merely worldly living are 
so increasingly powerful, in our days, that, among 
young people particularly, we see too many who re- 
fuse to take any account of the future life, but be- 
come absorbed in the ambitions and pleasures of the 
present. 

I confess that a main stimulus to the writing of 
the present work was my hope that it might attract 
the attention of such persons, whether young or old, 
and turn their eyes upon a larger, broader, and juster 
view of life. 

It remains true, also, that, whether we wish it or 
not, young people, and many older ones too, are wor- 
ried with doubts and fears which did not4:rouble the 
Christian world half a century ago. Science — the 
inquiry into natural phenomena and their " laws " — 
has been " popularized," as the phrase goes, and some 
men assert, and many ignorantly believe, that there 
has arisen a " conflict between science and religion ;" 
which is as though one should assert that there is 
a conflict between the multiplication table and the 
higher geometry. Still, this supposed "conflict" is 



TO PARENTS AND TEACHERS. 5 

undoubtedly a terror to many good men and women, 
who imagine that religion is in danger from the 
advance of science; and who close their eyes and 
refuse to reason about the existence of God and the 
Future Life, because they fear that that way lies loss 
of Faith. So strong and wide-spread is this fear, 
that I have been warned by friends who approve 
entirely of the objects and are kind enough also to 
praise the execution of my little book, that it will 
be kept out of some Christian households, because 
" the parents do not wish their young people to 
consider such matters." 

One ought not to treat disrespectfully such fears, 
although they are needless. Mistaken as they are, 
they have their origin in an anxious solicitude for 
the moral and spiritual welfare of their children, 
which conscientious parents are bound to feel. But 
to those who are subject to such alarms it is proper 
to say here that I would rather burn my book than 
place even a slight stumbling-block in the way of a 
single human being's religious faith. The main ob- 
ject of my writing has been, on the contrary, to re- 
vive and strengthen this faith; and the book has 
grown largely out of an earnest wish to maintain and 
invigorate in my own young people, and the chil- 
dren of dear friends, that hope and confident Chris- 
tian faith in God and immortality which is, in my 
belief, the chief and only true solace for the trouble 
of living here. 



6 TO PARENTS AND TEACHERS. 

We cannot, if we would, prevent our young peo- 
ple from discussing these questions. But surely no 
thoughtful father or mother would like to see son 
or daughter grow up without thought of them. The 
more intelligent youth are, the wider their read- 
ing and study, the more certain they are to ask 
and discuss. It seems to me of great importance 
that their questions should have answer; that their 
discussions should be reasonable and well-informed. 
In that way, at least, they are the more certain to 
maintain a living interest in these profoundly im- 
portant matters, which otherwise they may, as many 
do, put aside and out of their minds, as things which 
they " may leave to the clergy," or which " do not 
concern them." The way to inspire our youth with 
the Christian faith in God and immortality is, it 
seems to me, to meet their inquiries frankly, to wel- 
come them as reasonable, proper, and tending, if pur- 
sued in an honest and respectful spirit, only to the 
firmer establishment of that right thinking out of 
which alone can grow right living: "for he that 
Cometh to God must believe that He is ; and that He 
is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him." 

I believe, then, that he who asks, as so many are 
doing in these daj^s — secretly oftener than openly — 
whether or no there is really a God who not only 
created but who also continues to care for the affairs 
and inhabitants of this world, has at least taken a 
first important step. He shows that he thinks the 



TO PARENTS AND TEACHERS. 7 

matter worth an inquiry, and he deserves an answer 
from those wlio believe. 

He who asks whether there is a Future Life sliows 
by his question at least some interest in what is a 
supremely important matter to us all. He ought to 
be encouraged and not reproved for his curiosity. 
It would be a pity to have him come to a wrong 
conclusion ; but in my belief it would be very much 
worse if he took no interest in the question at all — 
if he thought it a matter of no concern or no impor- 
tance to him. 

" What is Life ?" is a question now, more than ever 
before, engaging the attention of thoughtful men and 
women. In this problem x may represent that un- 
known quantity, lying outside of our knowledge and 
experience, which is the subject of this speculation 
and inquiry. 

There are those who assert that a? = 0. 

So far it is absolutely certain that no one has 
proved this proposition. !No one has been able to 
demonstrate that x is equal to zero. 

Neither (aside from Revelation), it must be grant- 
ed, has any one been able to scientifically prove the 
converse — that a?=ra continuous and conscious pro- 
longation of our lives after the death of the body. 

In fact, X is in this case not only an unknown but 
an unknowable quantity. 

There are many such in physics; but that does 
not prevent science from dealing with them. No 



8 TO PARENTS AND TEACHERS. 

one has seen, or in any other way physically appre- 
hended, an atom or a molecule. Yet a great body 
of science deals fearlessly with these unknown and 
unknowable quantities, and comes to sufficiently sen- 
sible conclusions. In such matters science does not 
think it unreasonable to reason, because science holds, 
from a wide experience, that the material universe 
is based on laws, some known and many others still 
unknown to us ; but — and this is the fundamental 
proposition on which all science rests — that there is 
a general consistence and harmony of things, so that 
from a careful scrutiny and comparison of known 
phenomena science may not only discover the '' laws," 
so called, on which they proceed, but may, moreover, 
confidently predicate still other phenomena and other 
laws, having regard to what still remains unknown. 

Thus, in the language of the apostle Paul, " The in- 
visible things of Him from the creation of the world 
are clearly seen, hei?ig understood hy the things that 
are mader 

Out of the entirely legitimate speculations of 
science are thus born hypotheses which, if they are 
found to conform with general accuracy to known 
phenomena and laws, become theories. 

JSTow, the processes which are thus legitimate when 
used by scientific investigators in the ascertainment 
of merely material, and therefore secondary, matters, 
cannot become illegitimate if they are applied also 
to the very highest relations of all, those which con- 



TO PARENTS AND TEACHERS. 9 

cern our nobler part — the mind or spirit — and tlie 
settlement of which must necessarily control the 
conduct of our lives: for Paul reasoned logically 
when he said, " If after the manner of men I have 
fought wdth beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it 
me if the dead rise not ? let us eat and drink, for 
to-morrow we die." 

" No man hath seen God with his eyes at any time 
in this life," and so no one has seen an atom of 
matter. 

It is not possible to demonstrate scientifically that 
the soul of man may have continued life after the 
death of the body. 

£vt neither is it possible to demonstrate the con- 
trary. 

The defender of the atomic theory supports it, 
because he finds that it gives a sensible explanation 
and justification of a multitude of known phenom- 
ena, and is consistent with well ascertained " natural 
laws." In like manner the theory of the existence 
of God^ and the reality of a future life^ finds its 
justification in all that is now ascertained of the 
material universe^ and of human life on this planet. 

It is in strict harmony with all we know; while 
the opposite hypothesis introduces confusion, and 
may for that reason be held, scientifically, to be in 
the highest degree improbable — until at least some 
slight evidence for it shall be produced. 

The book which follows was w^-itten for young 



10 TO PARENTS AND TEACHERS. 

people, and I have used the direct and familiar ad- 
dress with which one naturally speaks to youth. 
But, as I have been unusually frank in this preface, 
I will here add that I hope to have for my readers 
not only young people, but some of mature years as 
well. There are, alas! very many men and women 
in these days whose faith is feeble and uncertain, 
a source of discomfort to them rather than of joy : 
to some such I hope my little book may prove 
helpful. 



CONTENTS. 



OUAP. PAGK 

INTRODUCTION 13 

I. THE IMPORTANCE OP FAITH 17 

II. THE REASONABLENESS OP RELIGIOUS FAITH ... 23 

III. WHAT ARE YOU ? 31 

IV. YOU ARE AN INDIVIDUAL 35 

V. THE NECESSITY OP A LIVING FAITH 42 

VI. FAITH AND SCIENCE 53 

VII. SCIENCE AND THE FUTURE LIFE 61 

VIII. THE LOriTS OF SPECULATION 75 

IX. MORAL AS WELL AS PHYSICAL LAWS 82 

X. THE BIBLE AS A BOOK 96 

XI. THE MYSTERY OP PAIN 103 

XII. THE LIMIT OP AUTHORITY 115 

XIIL MIRACLES 126 

XIV. NATURE OF THE FUTURE LIFE 139 

XV. PRAYER 159 

XVI. CONDUCT OF LIFE 172 

XVII. CONDUCT OP LIFE {continued) 186 

NOTES 211 



GOD AND THE FUTUEE LIFE. 



INTEODUCTIOK 

My dear Children, — Some of you are now at 
the age when you are about to leave the hands of 
the pious mother w^ho has carefully and lovingly 
instructed you in your Christian duties, and tried to 
fix you in correct habits of life. She has taught 
you that the Christian religion prescribes the true 
rule of living; that the practices it inculcates are 
necessary for the proper conduct of your life liere, 
and for happy development in a life hereafter ; that 
you should regard God as a loving Father, and his 
commands as the rule of your conduct. 

As you emerge from the kindly shelter of her af- 
fections and enter upon the world, the first challenge 
you receive is a challenge of this faith which, as 
children, you have been accustomed to regard as not 
only sacred but undisputed. It has lieen a surj)rise 
to the elder of you to discover that the Christian 



1-i GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

world, SO called, consists nowadays, in the main, not 
of good and bad believers — of persons all or nearly 
all of whom are agreed to accept the Christian doc- 
trines and theory of life, and differ only in the man- 
ner and degree to which their common belief influ- 
ences and controls their lives — but that it contains 
an increasing number of more or less intelligent and 
well-intending people, who, silently or openly, repu- 
diate this common belief, and deny or doubt the 
fundamental tenets of the Christian faith, the ex- 
istence of God, and the immortality of the soul. 

You cannot live in the world and remain ignorant 
of, or unaffected by, this doubt and unbelief which 
are sweeping through Christendom. You will en- 
counter them at every step. In much that you will 
read, if you are to be intelligent men and women, 
and in the conversation of thoughtful as well as of 
frivolous people, but still more in the conduct and 
policy of a great multitude of the thoughtless, you 
will be forced to see, if you think on so important a 
matter at all, that the theory of life propounded by 
Jesus is either rejected, or, in much the greater num- 
ber of cases, is held in a perfunctory manner, as a 
kind of vague Sunday faith which has little applica- 
tion to, or influence on, every-day life. 

It is not easy to live in the world and not be af- 
fected by its thoughts and customs. Man is a social 



INTRODUCTION. 15 

being ; and you will find nothing in your life so dif- 
ficult as to remain unmoved by the spirit of those 
among whom you live, or to resist the subtle influ- 
ence of the habits and thoughts of those about you. 
You may see, every day, how even strong men have 
their notions of right and wrong warped by the gen- 
eral course of the society in which they are cast ; 
how easily we drift with the general current ; how, 
insensibly to themselves, men's lives are shaped, their 
conduct changed, their resolves weakened, by the 
force of social forms and habits. You need great 
powers of resistance to withstand such influences; 
and you need to help you, as I shall endeavor to 
make plain to you in w^hat follows, the conservative 
force which we can get only from positive religious 
convictions so strongly held as to exert a constant 
and mastering influence over our thoughts and 
aims. 

It is proper and necessary to your real happiness, 
not only hereafter but in this life, that each one of 
you shall live his own life ; that you shall establish 
a personal, individual existence as a man or woman ; 
because otherwise you would become, as too many 
do, merely an insignificant fragment of a great mass, 
surging hither and thither on the motion of vague 
or blind general impulses, the sport of circumstances, 
or of stronger wills than your own. 



16 GOD AND THE FUTUKE LIFE. 

It is not necGGsarj that you should be rich, or pow- 
erful, or famous ; these incidents are far more a hin- 
derance than a help to a trae life. There is no place 
in society, however low, in which a man or woman 
may not, with effort, live an individual life ; and this 
I conceive to be the most important of all to us, be- 
cause it is as individuals, as substantive personalities, 
if at all, that we are to live in the future life ; not as 
undivided and undistinguishable fragments of some 
vast chaotic mass of life. Your bodies may be swept 
hither and thither on the uncontrollable waves of 
society an^ events ; but it is your spiritual part, your 
souls, wuicj Save the only real importance. 

Your soul- if you have one — that is you; and it 
was because he saw that the training toward higher 
things of this spiritual and immortal part was the 
one matter of supreme and overshadowing impor- 
tance, that the great teacher Arnold of Rugby wrote 
that " the only thing of moment in life or in man is 
character." 

The body is like the clothes you put on it. The 
soul is the man. 

If we have this individuality of which I speak, if 
we have souls or spiritual parts capable of existence 
hereafter and beyond death, surely it is our most im- 
portant labor here to preserve, to train, and improve 
this nobler and only substantial part of ourselves. 



THE IMPOllTANCE OF FAITH. 17 



I. 

THE IMPORTANCE OF FAITH. 

The future — that which is to come — even in this 
life, is to us dark and impenetrable ; hence we speak 
of " faith." We cannot foreknow ; hence we speak 
of "believing." 

IS'othing is more universally and abso^-^ely true 
than that we "walk by faith." Eve^ ui the af- 
fairs of this life the doubter is weal^ -the success- 
ful, the powerful men are thobCi^^vho take much 
upon trust. They study the laws of trade, of nat- 
ure, or of the human mind; and they make their 
ventures, or plan their course, not because they can 
foresee details or certainly foretell results, not be- 
cause they can grasp all the elements; but in the 
faith that, with proper effort on their parts, and 
working in accordance with the laws of nature and 
of human nature, success will follow. 

No great worldly success even is gained without 
a large and inspiring faith in him who is to gain 
it. No man has conquered difficulties, or overcome 
serious obstacles, who has not known times in the 

2 



18 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

struggle when all the facts and all the force of 
events seemed to be against him, and when, but 
for his belief in the lawfulness of his cause, or in 
the care and skill with which his enterprise was 
planned, he would have given up. The weak, who 
falter and run away, are those who lack faith in 
this general sense. The commander who believes 
he is going to be beaten is beaten already ; the mer- 
chant who expects failure is crippled in advance : 
it is the man who believes who does the impossi- 
ble; and even in this merely worldly sense it is 
true that by faith men have removed mountains. 

The immediate future in our lives is so impen- 
etrable to all of us that we constantly need to 
"walk by faith" even in the commonest enter- 
prises, and " ITothing venture nothing win " is a 
proverb. 

A prudent man planning an enterprise begins by 
examining all its elements, all the obstacles in his way, 
all the details likely to make for or against his success ; 
but if he is wise, he above all things takes care that 
what he proposes shall be in harmony with natural 
laws, and shall be helpful to the general interests and 
welfare of society — that is to say, of his fellow-men. 
He knows beforehand that he cannot hope entirely 
to control events ; and he guards, so far as possible, 
against the inevitable uncertainties by founding him- 



THE IMPORTANCE OF FAITH. 19 

self upon the general prosperity, and by going along 
with and not contrary to those natural laws which he 
understands. It is in this way that great and perma- 
nent successes are made. Thus a young man plan- 
ning a career for himself would, if he were far-sighted 
and wise enough to deserve success, take care in the 
beginning that his plans were not to violate natural 
laws, nor to be hurtful, but beneficial, to his fellow- 
men ; and, having taken this precaution, he would go 
on, largely on faith, against great and frequent dis- 
couragements, often in poverty, friendless, misunder- 
stood, perhaps in temporary defeat and disgrace ; but 
he would follow in one fixed direction, and govern 
his life and his course by the lines he had laid out in 
the beginning. 

To do otherwise, to set out without definite pur- 
pose, to change from one kind of effort to another 
at slight temptations of fortune, would be, as you 
easily see, to fritter away his life ; to waste his 
strength without result. To be unstable, to "do 
everything by turns and nothing well," to live one's 
life without some fixed theory of action, to drift, 
even in the affairs of this brief life, is acknowledged 
by everybody to be unwise, unfit, and even deserv- 
ing contempt. It is to be the sport of circumstances 
and to invite failure. 

Now, what is thus plainly true in the affairs of 



20 GOD AND THE FUTUEE LIFE. 

this life must be, as I would like you to see, true in 
a far greater and more important sense, if you are 
to look for another and more permanent existence 
after death. If this life in the body is not all, but if 
it is only the prelude to a far broader, more enduring, 
and higher existence for you, necessarily you ought 
to take that other and larger part of your life into 
account in all your plans and thoughts. To do oth- 
erwise would be to neglect the precautions which 
men take, as I have said, for objects of infinitely 
less importance. It would be as though one should 
engage an architect to build a cellar, but run up a 
costly house over it without regard to the skill or 
experience even of a builder or practical mechanic. 

To consent to live without definite notions of its 
objects and tendencies, must needs make all human 
effort random and unsatisfactorv, and human life an 
aimless or a selfish and merely animal existence. 
The man who does this can only drift. He is the 
creature of his impulses and of his fears, as are the 
animals. We have been left intellectually free to 
believe as seems to us most reasonable and conclu- 
sive on this great question. You may satisfy your 
minds, as some have done, that there is no God, and 
no future life for you ; and when you come to this 
conviction or faith you will live accordingly. Or 
you may convince yourself that there is a God, and 



THE IMPORTANCE OF FAITH. 21 

that your life — yourself — will continue after your 
body perishes ; and as, in the other case, if this be- 
lief takes root in your mind, if it is a conviction, you 
will be impelled to plan your present life in accord- 
ance with it. But it is plainly your highest duty to 
yourself, it is the one thing necessary to your own 
real manhood or womanhood, and to your satisfactory 
living, that you shall come to some conclusion. You 
ought not to put it aside ; for it is mainly the ability 
to consider this question which makes us higher than, 
and different from, the animals ; and it is the convic- 
tion to which you come, the Faith which comes to 
you and becomes part of you, which alone can en- 
able you to plan your life satisfactorily, and to live 
it with purpose and effectively. 

That is to say, you cannot live, in any sense high- 
er than the merest animal existence, without faith. 
"As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he;" and if 
he will not think at all of this problem of what life 
means, or if he is content to think vaguely and care- 
lessly, necessarily he drifts, as a ship whose master 
lays no course for her ; he tends to become no better, 
but rather worse, than the beasts which perish ; he 
abandons that which, if there is a future life, is the 
only important or enduring part of him, and which, 
even in this life, is needed to make him a man, and 
not merely (as we see in so many instances) an abler 



22 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

and more dangerous kind of animal. Nothing is so 
important to the direction of your lives and your 
efforts, to the maintenance of your self-possession 
and serenity of soul, as that you shall be possessed 
by a definite, firmly grasped belief as to the real ob- 
jects of your life, and its duration and character. 

To live without God in the world is sufficiently 
dreary ; but the man who sincerely and soberly de- 
nies God and a future life, though I tliink him a 
very unenviable being, has yet a faith, and may, in 
my belief, be happier and more useful to his fellow- 
men than that great number who refuse to think at 
all of this subject, or even than those whose faith is 
perfunctory, vague, a source of confusion, irresolu- 
tion, and terror, and not of the strength and consist- 
ency which come of a real belief. 



THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGIOUS FAITH. 23 



11. 

THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGIOUS FAITH. 

I HAVE tried, in what goes before, to impress on 
your minds that a belief of some kind concerning 
the meaning and purpose of human life is necessary 
to raise us above the beasts, with whom, so far as 
regards our bodies, we have so much in common. 
Life without some such belief — life without Faith, 
in this sense — is unendurable to thoughtful men and 
women. You will notice that coincidently with the 
general and lamentable decadence of faith in the 
Christian theory of life, which marks our century, 
has come a new and vigorous discussion of the ques- 
tion. What is the true meaning of life ? Some of the 
very men who most positively and earnestly reject 
the Christian faith are the most indefatigable in 
their efforts to establish some other theory of life. 
They cannot rest with mere negation ; and you may 
see in the tone and drift of their discussions how 
intolerable to these thoughtful doubters is mere 
doubting ; how necessary to their peace of mind is 
a settled belief of some kind. The men who in 



24 GOD AXD THE FUTURE LIFE. 

these days deny the existence of God and the im- 
mortality of the soul, are farthest from resting con- 
tent with this mere denial ; they are the most active, 
the most prominent and zealous in their effort to 
discover some other and tenable faith — some other 
theory on which to explain satisfactorily to them- 
selves, and harmoniously with the general laws of 
nature and the creation, the meaning and purpose of 
human life. Thus, strangely enough, this great ques- 
tion has never been so earnestly and widely con- 
sidered as now, in this which is often called the Age 
of the Decadence of Faith. 

They, too, who reject Christianity thus acknowl- 
edge that a faith of some kind is necessary to their 
comfort and satisfaction. 

Therefore, that you ought to think clearly on this 
subject, and that you ought to settle to some form 
of faith, as indispensable to your satisfactory living, 
you may hold certain. 

What, then, ought you to believe on this question ? 

I believe profoundly that there is a God, and a 
Future Life. The more I see of human life; the 
more I learn of what are called natural laws; the 
more closely I study the history of our race, of the 
earth, and of the universe, the more decidedly this 
seems to me to be the most reasonable, and the only 
reasonable belief. 



THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGIOUS FAITH. 25 

Naturally, I would like you to be " moved by tlie 
same faith " with myself. While you remained chil- 
dren it was sufficient for you to know that the 
matters I speak of were declared by Jesus, and are 
found in the Bible. You had no occasion to look 
farther; and to millions who, happily perhaps for 
themselves, do not come into contact with, or under 
the influence of the modern spirit of doubt, this re- 
mains, in like manner, conclusive. The words and 
the life of Jesus suffice for them. But the tendency, 
and often the eflEect, of modern discussion is to weak- 
en and shake this simpler faith. Of this we can- 
not complain ; but it forces us to look more carefully 
into the subject, and, if possible, to seek a reason for 
the faith that is within us — outside of the Bible — 
because the men and the books we reason with, and 
which appeal to our minds often with great force 
and acuteness, will not accept the Bible as final. 

A clergyman in the pulpit may declare that it is 
true that there is a God, and that he has destined us 
to a future life, because the Bible so declares. But 
the unbeliever replies, " It may be true, but I will 
not take it on the evidence you present. If a col- 
lege professor tells me that a proposition in mathe- 
matics is true because Euclid so delivered it, I reply 
to him, it may be true, but it is not true for the rea- 
son you give, but outside of that altogether. Dem- 



26 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

onstrate its truth to me, then I will believe. Euclid 
is but a reporter. I will not accept him for more 
than that." 

And this young doubter proposes to treat the 
Bible as of no more final authority than a book of 
mathematics. He admits that, in citing the Bible, 
the clergyman has offered what lav/yers call pre- 
sumptive evidence, but asserts that he has not nec- 
essarily proved his case. 

Now, I do not know that those of us who believe 
have a right to blame this doubter. We have a 
right, if we choose, or if by our intellectual training 
we are impelled to it, to use our reasoning powers 
on this as on all other subjects. We have a right to 
inquire ; and as this question is the most important 
of all to ourselves, we are bound to inquire. And 
while we cannot expect to arrive at absolute certain- 
ty on this, as on some other less important questions, 
I believe that intelligent inquiry will only result in 
strengthening faith ; and that the more closely you 
examine the theory that there is a God, and that 
there is for us a future life, the more you will be 
convinced that all the probabilities lie on that side ; 
and that those who deny these positions require, in 
fact, from you a greater stretch of faith, and impose 
upon your minds a far greater strain, than those who 
ask you to believe. 



THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGIOUS FAITH. 27 

It would be strange and puzzling to us who ac- 
cept the Bible as true if this were not so ; for to 
admit that the Scripture teachings of God and a 
future life are repugnant to the course of nature, 
and to what we can know of human life and charac- 
ter, would be to say that God contradicts himself. 
It is more reasonable to expect that the belief which 
we draw from the Bible must be confirmed by what 
we see in the material universe, and that the word 
and the works of God must be consistent with each 
other. 

"While He has declared that no man shall see him 
at any time with his eyes in this life, and while He 
has hidden the future beyond the grave absolutely 
from apprehension by our bodily senses, we may, I 
believe, arrive at such an assurance on these subjects, 
from a view of the present life and of all the uni- 
verse that surrounds us, as, though it cannot resolve 
all mysteries (and thus make faith of no importance), 
will yet place that faith on a reasonable basis, and 
confirm it by all that human thought can master of 
the works and laws of the Creator. 

Please to observe that the greatest discoveries in 
science, of these later days, rest on no stronger foun- 
dation than this. The theory of Evolution is not 
proved — no man has seen the changes which it sup- 
poses ; all that its supporters assert is, that in some 



28 GOD AND THE FUTUKE LIFE. 

large and important aspects, but not in all, it ex- 
plains the course of organic life, and the changes 
this has undergone, more perfectly than other the- 
ories which have been advanced. The molecular 
theory in physics is not proved in the sense that any 
one has seen, or in any other way physically appre- 
hended, a molecule, or an atom of matter. Your 
teacher in physics will tell you only that it ex- 
plains certain phenomena of matter better, and all 
these phenomena more completely, than any other 
theory. 'Now, what we, who believe in God and in a 
future life, may reasonably expect to find in a study 
of human life and of nature is, that our theory shall 
have like confirmation with these others. 

If a young man at school or college should say to 
his teacher, " I refuse to look farther into the atomic 
theory which you are teaching unless you will first 
show me an atom," he would rightly be thought a 
bumptious young fellow, only moderately endowed 
with common-sense. But this would be just as rea- 
sonable as if one should say, " I decline to believe in 
God unless you show me God ; or in the future life 
unless you first produce me a being from that future 
state." 

On the other hand, the inquirer into physical phe- 
nomena, when he has satisfied himself of a truth, 
makes that, so far as it applies, a basis of his further 



THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGIOUS FAITH. 29 

investigations. The mathematician, satisfied that 
twice two makes four — why, he knows not — does 
not thereupon neglect this important element in his 
calculations ; does not treat it as of little or no con- 
sequence. He makes it, on the contrary, the guide, 
the controlling factor in all his calculations. It in- 
forms and overrules his mathematical life. If, by 
any strange chance, doubt should be thrown on its 
truth, he would not rest until he had established it, 
or had found some equivalent truth to replace it. 

In like manner I have endeavored, in previous 
chapters, to show you how and why whatever beliefs 
you may hold concerning God and the future life 
ought to become the rule of your conduct ; that a 
right belief is of vital importance if you desire to 
make anything satisfactory out of your life ; if it is 
to be anything more than a medley of confused and 
random acts. 

God has chosen, for various reasons, some of which 
are suflSciently obvious, to conceal from us not mere- 
ly that part of our lives which lies beyond the grave, 
but even all knowledge of the immediate future in 
this life. But he has given us reasoning faculties, 
has enabled us to observe facts and to draw conclu- 
sions — in short, to think. I believe that, while he 
has filled our lives with mysteries which we vainly 
strive to comprehend, he has not exacted of us either 



30 GOD AND THE FUTUKE LIFE. 

unreasonable or unreasoning belief ; and that in this 
supremely important matter of the future life we 
may come to as valid conclusions by inquiry and 
reasoning as men of science do in many of their in- 
vestigations from the known to the unknown, or as 
they also do where their field of facts is large enough 
— in reasoning from the known to the admittedly 
unknowable. 

To proceed systematically to the inquiry which I 
urge, it seems advisable to consider first what you 
really are, what kind of being, and what kind of 
circumstances surround you. 



WHAT ARE YOU? 31 



III. 

WHAT ARE YOU? 

You are a rational, that is to say, a thinking and 
reasoning being, brought into existence without your 
previous knowledge or consent ; placed here in cir- 
cumstances more or less disagreeable; subject to 
pain and to various kinds of suffering, the least of 
which, please observe, are those which affect your 
body; and finally to the decay and dissolution of 
this body. 

You are unable to control your physical life, either 
in its circumstances or its duration, except to an ex- 
tremely moderate degree. You are moved by im- 
pulses, desires, and passions, almost all of a kind in- 
jurious not only to your nobler or spiritual part, but 
even to your body, and which require your constant 
attention to control, or even to guide them. Igno- 
rant to a very great extent of the laws of your phys- 
ical being, your powers are limited on every side by 
boundaries which no effort of yours, or of all man- 
kind, can do more than widen a very little ; for by 
no means in your reach can you foreknow even what 



32 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

may happen in the next moment to yourself, or to 
those dearer to you than your own life. The wisest 
of mankind is without sufficient knowledge to guard 
his life securely against danger or distress. Your 
whole existence here is one continuous uncertainty ; 
and so true is this that, in spite of the wisdom of the 
most prudent and care-taking, a proverb relates that 
" it is the unexpected which always happens." 

From the moment of your birth but one event is 
certain for you, and that is your death; and you 
cannot even foreknow the time when this will come. 
As an intelligent being, you have a boundless ca- 
pacity and desire for knowledge ; and you see in 
the universe, and even on this planet, an illimitable 
field for inquiry and acquisition. Yet we scarcely 
begin to know what knowledge is in any branch of 
life or nature before bodily infirmities and old age 
impair our physical energies and weaken the organs 
on whose help we depend for the exercise of our 
intellectual powers : as the explorer of a strange con- 
tinent might be crippled on the threshold of his 
discoveries by the breaking down of his wagons, the 
death of his horses, or the desertion of his guides. 

You can hope, by the utmost efforts of a long 
life, to know by sight only a small part of the planet 
on which we live ; yet you know that our earth is 
but one of myriads of worlds, and that our sun and 



WHAT ARE YOU? 33 

its planets form only one of the smaller of the sys- 
tems which crowd the universe. Yon are surround- 
ed by mysteries which the wisest of our race call 
" laws," and can no further explain ; and if you could 
master all science and all knowledge, you would only 
know that man has penetrated with uncertain hands 
but skin-deep into the infinite. 

A great part of our life here is needed to teach 
us even the most superficial knowledge of the laws 
of our physical being; and yet all the knowledge 
we may gain and apply does not suflSce to protect 
us against the gravest calamities or the most un- 
looked-for and painful mishaps. You have a desire 
for virtuous conduct, yet find yourself constantly the 
prey of tendencies to vice and wrong-doing. Your 
whole conscious life here, if it is rightly conducted, 
is necessarily an unremitting strife with your evil pro- 
pensities, which, on the least indulgence, are prone 
to become fixed as habits ; and with the utmost care 
we know not at what moment evil will overcome 
our good intentions. 

Plan your life as carefully, as prudently as you 
may, bend all your energies to the achievement of 
your purposes, and yet you may discover in the 
end tliat your plans were blunders, and that your 
labors have led only to the disappointment of your 
hopes. 

3 



34 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

And finally, at the end of the most fortunate life, 
comes death. 

If, then, we are to conclude that there is no pos- 
sibility of life for us beyond the body, that pliysical 
death means the extinction not merely of our bodies 
but of ourselves^ then certainly mankind are the 
sport of a very cruel and ghastly injustice ; and we 
may reasonably ask by what strange and not to be 
looked for stroke of unreason, in a universe which 
we perceive on every hand to be the harmonious 
creature of laws, men have been endowed with fac- 
ulties doomed to be wasted, with intelligent desires 
foreordained only to disappointment ? How comes 
this huge and inexplicable incongruity in a system 
which, in every part of it, save this highest, is evi- 
dently based on purpose, and carried on upon an 
intelligent plan? 



YOU ARE AN INDIVIDUAL. 35 



IV. 

YOU ARE AN INDIVIDUAL. 

Such, however, is your life, and you are to live it 
upon such a plan as you may choose to form. 

Tou are at liberty to plan for yourself ; and not 
only this, you must do so. You are an individual, 
a distinct personality. For a time, during your im- 
mature life you lived under the guidance of father 
and mother; but the most tender and the wisest 
parents even can, as a very wide experience teaches, 
far more easily spoil than make the lives of their 
children. It is your own effort, your own will alone 
which can make you a man or a woman in any true 
sense. 

You can, at any time, share this individuality — 
yourself — with others only to an extremely limited 
extent. Live as intimately as you may with an- 
other, you never become wholly one with him. 

Your mother mourns in her heart that, though 
you are her own, she knows you not. 

At bottom each one of us is solitary — alone with 
God. 



36 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

Each one of us must choose for himself what he 
will make of this life, which has come to him with- 
out his asking, and in which he finds himself not 
only free but forced to choose. 

I^ow, in making up your mind what to do with 
your life, your first reasonable inquiry will be this 
one : How long is it to last ? and in what conditions 
is it to be passed ? If your conscious and personal 
existence is to have only a little longer duration 
than the life of a cow, and a little shorter than 
that of a crow, or an elejohant, that fact, if it is a 
fact, must very greatly control your plans. If, on 
the other hand, you find reason to believe that this 
life in the body is to be but a very small and insig- 
nificant fraction of your whole existence, and that 
your personality will continue unimpaired beyond 
the grave, and in a condition where you wiU act 
without reference to your present physical part (your 
body), that fact, if it is a fact, can scarcely fail, if it 
impresses itself on your mind, to make all your plans 
for this life very greatly and essentially different. 

You will easily see that this must be so, if you 
will refiect that an event which would be of the 
greatest moment to you if this life were all you had 
to live, might assume an entirely different aspect and 
significance if this is but a small part of your exist- 
ence, and if, in fact, the few years you are to pass 



YOU ARE AN INDIVIDUAL. 37 

here in the company of your body are, compared 
with the total duration of your life, far less than the 
few brief years you pass at school would appear, if 
compared with the full span of human life of three- 
score years and ten. 

A cow, being hungry and unable to find food oth- 
erwise, leaps a fence and eats her fill in a strange 
field. 'Nor do we blame her. Only a beating — the 
dread of a severer pain than hunger — will keep her 
within her master's bounds. But a man, a reasoning 
being, suffers hunger and refuses to steal — not from 
fear of the constable and the jail, but because he 
will not taint his soul, his immortal part, with wrong 
to gratify his body. 

If it were an immemorial custom of our colleges 
to lead the members of the graduating class to the 
public square or campus as soon as they had received 
their diplomas, and there and then cut off their heads, 
it is not absolutely impossible that young men would 
still be sent to college — for the power of fashion is 
very great. But, being placed there, they certainly 
would not give themselves to the fulfilment of disa- 
greeable duties, nor deny themselves any pleasures 
within their reach. If any studied, it would be be- 
cause the acquisition of knowledge was, on the 
whole, more agreeable to them than some other 
form of dissipation ; and, with extinction only four 



38 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

years ahead, each would follow his own impulses. To 
talk of duty or of self-denial to men so jDlaced would 
seem to them ridiculous, and would, in fact, be so. 

But a boy who is reasonably persuaded that the 
object of attending school, or learning a trade, is to 
fit him for the duties and enjoyments of manhood, 
reconciles himself to the disagreeables, the self-denial 
and submission which his student or apprentice life 
imposes, because he believes that there is a higher 
life beyond the school or the apprentice's term, a life 
of greater activity, greater independence, and wider 
enjoyments, for which he is laboriously and perhaps 
even painfully fitting himself, and into which he 
justly believes he could not enter without such pre- 
liminary training. 

You will see, I think, out of all this that what 
your plans in life shall be, what you will make the 
object of your hopes and aims, and by what means 
you will prosecute these objects — what manner of 
man or woman you are to be, in short — must depend 
absolutely upon what you conceive life to be, what 
you believe to be the bearings of this life ; what is 
to be the duration of your whole existence. 

But, if you reflect a little, you will perceive some- 
thing further, namely, that patience, self-sacrifice, 
cheerful submission to disappointments and discom- 
forts, courage, endurance, all that we call manly and 



YOU ARE AN INDIVIDUAL. 39 

Cliristian virtues — those qualities in men for the cul- 
tivation of which we respect them, and on which hu- 
man society rests — do arise out of a belief in a future 
life. They become reasonable only where the man 
believes in a life hereafter ; nor is there a doubt that 
if anywhere in a society or nation this belief should 
die out and become extinct, that society or nation 
would perish, as an organized body ; because its mem- 
bers would rapidly become self-seeking, would scorn 
self-denial, would refuse submission to the general 
good. " Every man for himself " would logically be- 
come the supreme rule; and it would require the 
superior force of a dictator or military tyrant to 
maintain even the commonest arts of civilization in 
such a society. So true is this, that wherever in any 
country the thought of and belief in a future life 
has died out among even a considerable part of the 
population, there, in the same measure, you see men 
turn to selfish enjoyments, to brutal or merely ani- 
mal lives; they avoid duty and self-sacrifice, and 
seek satisfaction in a scramble for wealth, fashion, 
ambition, or ease. 

You may object that there are men who, reject- 
ing God and denying a future life for themselves 
or mankind, are still conspicuously laborious for the 
good of their fellows — benevolent, unselfish, and obe- 
dient to a high sense of duty. This is very true ; 



40 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

and so, to recur to my former illustration of the con- 
duct of college students, if they knew that on their 
graduation they were to be killed, not all would turn 
to low or degrading pleasures, though it is probable 
that the greater part would do so. But each would 
pursue that which most gratified his own mind ; and 
while some would study and read, this would be 
because to these few the acquisition of knowledge 
seemed, on the whole, pleasanter than gluttony, 
drunkenness, or some other form of vicious indul- 
gence. 

'Not are you to forget that the long fixed code of 
morals of Christendom retains inevitably a powerful 
influence over even those who nowadays deny the 
Christian doctrine, and especially on those who, re- 
jecting this theory of life, are yet impelled to seek 
another. Thoughtful sceptics or deniers are the 
most certain to strive after the highest ideal of liv- 
ing which they can conceive, and to be subjected in 
their thoughts and aspirations in this life most com- 
pletely by all that is noble and humane in the Chris- 
tian code. The mass of mankind are thus affected 
also, but to a much more limited degree, as we plain- 
ly perceive on every hand; and you need only to 
read the history of the Eoman decadence to see what 
becomes of a nation in which the belief in God and 
a future life has perished. In that sad and terrible 



YOU ARE AN INDIVIDUAL. 41 

story you can see liow futile is tlie effort of society 
to get on without God ; how selfishness takes the 
place of duty where men cease to believe in a future 
life ; how all the barriers of restraint are broken 
down, and society presently becomes corrupted, de- 
praved, vicious, and at last falls into helpless an- 
archy. 

The belief in God and a future life appears thus 
to be in harmony with the best interests, and even 
necessary to the orderly existence of human society. 
And this is because it operates as a restraint upon 
the selfish ambitions of the strong, as the protection 
of the weak, and the consoler of the unfortunate; 
and because it opens up a life beyond the grave, as 
the solace and satisfaction of those who find here 
their efforts thwarted and their hopes failures. 



42 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 



THE NECESSITY OF A LIVING FAITH. 

If I insist, even to repetition, upon tlie importance 
of Faith, this is because I should like you to grasp 
solidly this fact, that it is the greatest calamity which 
can befall a human being to live his life without a 
firm and permeating belief in God and the future 
life. "Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we 
die," is necessarily, though no doubt often uncon- 
sciously, the creed of one who has ceased to believe 
in a future and spiritual life for himself ; or, worse 
yet, of one who, as so many in our days, holds this 
faith vaguely and formally, as a thing which need 
have no effect upon his actions, or on his character 
which is the result of his actions ; as a faith which 
comes to him only as a spectre of terror in his lone- 
ly moments, or when he is ill, or in danger or great 
discomfort. 

It is written, " The devils believe also — and trem- 
ble ;" and the man to whom the faith we are con- 
sidering takes on this shape — to whom the future 
after death is a matter of no concern except as it 



THE NECESSITY OF A LIVING FAITH. 43 

leaves him a prey to nameless terrors — this man 
necessarily plays with life as a gambler, sadly or 
savagely as his temper may lead him, but without 
hope of any good which he might attain by the 
proper training of his spirit, outside the narrow and 
uncertain span of his few earthly days. The strong- 
er willed such a man is, and the better trained his 
intellect, the more apt he is to resent his circum- 
stances, his companionships, his disabilities and limi- 
tations. 

It is because the faith of Christendom has been 
so greatly shaken in modern days, because great 
masses of men have ceased to believe, in any real 
sense, in God and the future life, that we see such 
numbers devoted to the mere pursuit of comfort, 
wealth, and ambition — to the scramble after the 
lower pleasures and enjoyments, and the gratification 
of those desires and passions w^hich pertain to the 
body, and therefore to this life alone, and undue 
absorption in which leads to a merely animal exist- 
ence, and kills the spirit. We see more and more 
all over the Christian world that as this faith in 
God and expectation of a future life are weakened 
or decrease, so discontent, envy of the worldly great 
and successful, a craving for physical comforts and 
enjoyments, and a blind worship of success increase ; 
and thus we find a numerous multitude among the 



44 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

so-called Cliristian nations, tliouglitless and heedless, 
greedy, covetous, and self-seeking, by reason of un- 
belief, wliicli makes life to them dark and unreason- 
able, or hopeless and frivolous. 

This spread of unbelief among masses of men 
comes largely out of the misconduct of those who 
profess to hold the Christian faith, but who do not 
carry it into their daily lives. If you go to church 
on Sunday and profess, in public, to believe in the 
Christian doctrine, and if at the same time you are 
seen by your neighbor to be, in your daily life, 
greedy, covetous, cruel, heartless, unduly ambitious, 
tyrannical, self-seeking, unscrupulous in the pursuit 
of your advantages, careless of your neighbor's wel- 
fare, unjust, those who live with you, or near you, 
whose lives your conduct afiects, are very likely to 
reject this faith you profess as untrue and useless, 
because they see that it does not control your own 
life. N^or is any human being so humble, or his 
life so devoid of influence, that his conduct does 
not aflfect the lives and opinions of others. 

That you shall profoundly and really believe in 
God and a future life is important, therefore, not 
only to yourself, but to all who live within reach of 
your life and are affected by it. The man possessed 
by this faith must presently find the force of his de- 
sires and passions moderated, his griefs and disap- 



THE NECESSITY OF A LIVING FAITH. 45 

pointments lessened, his hopes enlarged. He has 
a wider view of the field, and plans his life on a 
broader scale. He will reasonably, and not out of 
mere terror, prefer self-denial to indulgence ; w^hat he 
believes will affect in the most deliberate and vital 
manner his whole plan of life, his views of conduct, 
his value of the results of effort, his measure of the 
importance of success in this life, of all its enjoyments 
and rewards, as well as of its cares, disappointments, 
sorrows, and evils. It will reveal to him a meaning 
and purpose in the accidents of this life, and enable 
him to arrange in the order of their real importance 
all its events which affect him. His anxieties will 
be decreased, his sorrows consoled, his ambition tem- 
pered by such a faith. 

It is because the Scripture announcement of God 
and a future life harmonizes so completely with all 
we know of this life; because it reveals its other- 
wise hidden purposes, and makes that reasonable 
and full of meaning which, otherw^ise regarded, seems 
to mankind but a madman's tale, " full of sound and 
fury, signifying nothing," that the message delivered 
by Jesus has had so profound and striking an effect 
upon the thoughts and lives of men in all stations, 
and of all degrees of culture, savage as well as civ- 
ilized, w^hen it was first made known to them. It 
is a revelation to mankind of the real object of their 



46 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

existence ; the justification, in their hearts, of what 
was felt, without this, to be an intolerable burden. 
Few men, even the most fortunate, unless they are 
mere animals, arrive at middle life without feeling 
profoundly that, if this life is all that belongs to us, 
\f for us there is no future beyond the grave, we 
are only the helpless creatures of a monstrous act 
of injustice. 

The theory of life and society, and of duty, de- 
clared by Jesus, clears up this whole mystery. It 
shows that to be just, reasonable, and in harmony 
with all we feel in us and see about us, which other- 
wise would be unjust, and tending to confusion and 
anarchy. Moreover, the solution it offers has the 
transcendent merit that it is comprehensible by the 
most ignorant and the most savage, equally with the 
most intelHgent and highly cultivated, and that it is 
accepted, as Jesus saw it would be, more readily by 
the w^eak, the suffering, the oppressed — the " babes 
and sucklings" — than by the fortunate and power- 
ful, w^ho are taken up with the affairs and enjoy- 
ments of this life, and whose curse it is, as He saw, 
that in the days of their prosperity and ease they 
do not feel the need of God. 

Our faith is but a larger forecast. If we are to 
have a share in the future life, it must needs be as 
conscious individuals; and that life can be only a 



THE NECESSITY OF A LIVING FAITH. 47 

continuation of tins in other scenes and nnder differ- 
ent circumstances. AVlien you were little children 
you looked merely to present gratification; and 
many men and women remain little children all 
their lives in this sense. But as you increased in 
years you saw, dimly often, but the more clearly the 
more sensible you became, that present self-denial 
might be wise, as a means of preparation for future 
enjoyments. At school and elsewhere you under- 
took labors and suffered privations in order that you 
might gain in knowledge and experience. And the 
true purpose of all this training was — pray bear in 
mind — not merely that you might learn skilfully to 
perform certain acts, as a bear may be taught to 
dance, or a pig to pick out at command the spots 
on a playing-card, but for a very much higher and 
more important end : to form your characters, and 
prepare you not merely to be skilful producers of 
something, adroit machines, but virtuous and useful 
members of society. If education and training fall 
short of that effect, they fail of their true end ; and 
if they have not this supreme end in view, they may 
easily become a curse instead of a blessing to your- 
self, or to your fellows. 

We ought to regard the events of this life as im- 
portant mainly as they affect our characters, and not 
as they affect our mere bodily comforts, or further 



48 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

our plans or ambitions. Wealth, place, power, fame, 
there is the best reason to believe, we do not carry 
with ns into the other life. We can carry there 
only ourselves^ our spiritual part; and to build up 
that, to improve it, to weed out of ourselves the evil 
passions which, for some mysterious reason, are so 
ready to take possession of us, to acquire a prefer- 
ence for and love of righteousness and virtue, and to 
cast out of our hearts malice, envy, uncharitableness, 
undue ambition, covetousness, and the other sins 
which do so easily beset us — this, you readily see, 
must be the real object of this life, if there is a 
future life. 

But that course which you should pursue, if you 
believe there is a future life for you — that use you 
would certainly make of your life on this planet, if 
you saw the future with the eye of sight, and not 
dimly through faith — that course it is which, as even 
those acknowledge who deny God, will make you 
the best citizen, the best member of society, the 
most useful and beneficent man or woman here. 

The main object of this practice of self-denial, and 
the other Christian virtues, so called, is to fit the in- 
dividual for participation in a reasonable and enjoya- 
ble life hereafter. That is his final inducement for 
their practice ; for these virtues, though they are so 
important to the aggregate which we call a Society 



THE NECESSITY OF A LIVING FAITH. 49 

or Nation, do not necessarily, or always, tend to the 
aggrandizement or even the temporary happiness of 
the individual here. On the contrary, their practice 
is often fatal to his success, or to his comfort in thi« 
life, and even to life itself; while their rejection 
leads, as we frequently see, to the attainment of many 
of those things w^hich are most desired by the mass 
of men. Take, for instance, the case of a soldier vol- 
unteering to serve his country in the field, and a 
contractor remaining at home to secure wealth out 
of army supplies, or a speculator gaining a fortune 
by betting on the event of a battle or a campaign. 
The soldier, after great hardships, perishes in battle, 
or of disease, or in a prison, leaving his wife and lit- 
tle ones to the cold pity of the pension laws ; the 
contractor or speculator amasses a great fortune, 
lives at home at ease, and perhaps becomes what is 
called an "influential member of society." Which 
of these two did his duty you need not be told. But 
if there is no future for us, the contractor and spec- 
ulator were evidently the wisest men — the poor sol- 
dier who gave his life freely out of a sense of duty 
to his country was but a purblind fool. If we are 
only animals, with no hope of existence beyond this 
life of the body, it is not to be denied that those of 
us are the wisest and most "practical" who take 
care to get the most for ourselves out of this l)rief 

4 



50 GOD AND THE FUTUKE LIFE. 

existence, and seize such share as by superior cun- 
ning or strength we can grab of that which to us 
may seem most desirable. There can be, in that 
case, no question of moral right and wrong, or of 
duty, but only a question of taste or preference. 

But, you may properly ask: Is, then, the poor 
soldier required to accept all the deprivation and 
suffering, the untimely death, and the knowledge 
that he leaves his family helpless — all this with no 
present satisfaction, and with only the hope, or be- 
lief it may be, that in the future life, about which 
he really knows nothing, he will have some kind of 
reward he does not know what ? 

No ; he has also a satisfaction in this life, and the 
greatest which, on the whole, man's life affords. He 
has the joyful consciousness of doing his duty. 

The sense of duty done is the brave man's solace 
in failure or misfortune. He has done what he 
could : the rest he leaves with God. The cause he 
believed just has broken down; the plans he had 
formed have failed; the good he intended has been 
brought to naught before his eyes ; he sees injustice 
prevail, and wrong triumphant ; but he has done his 
duty ; and, oppressed, in poverty, in disgrace, in sor- 
row, not for himself but for others, or for the cause 
he believes right and sacred, he is still serene, for he 
says, " The end I leave with God ;" and he trusts 



THE NECESSITY OF A LIVING FAITH. 51 

that in the future life he will see that all this faihire 
and suffering had some good meaning which now he 
cannot penetrate. Holding this faith, life is still 
important and full of meaning to him, where other- 
wise extinction would be welcome ; and he feels and 
knows that what concerned him was only to do his 
duty, and leave the result to God. 

Your lives will have been thin and profitless if, 
before you come to middle-age you have not, more 
than once or twice, had occasion to seek this conso- 
lation, this only real solace for failure in some enter- 
prise or effort where, not your own aggrandizement, 
but the benefit of others, was your aim. 

And observe that it is because there is a God, be- 
cause there is a future life, because this present life 
is not all we have to look for, that this cheer is ready 
for your soul, to maintain its sweetness and serenity. 
Leave out God, as the all-wise disposer of events, 
and the failure of your efforts and plans is final de- 
feat for you, and you would soon be persuaded that 
the service of your fellow-men, the least grateful of 
tasks, was but childish folly, and that unselfish de- 
votion to disagreeable duties was the vagary of a 
distempered mind. 

It needs all the impulse wliicli can be got from 
a permeating belief in God and the eternal life to 
give men patience, unselfishness, endurance in the 



52 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

performance of disagreeable duties, persistence in 
irksome, and witli men of great natural powers al- 
most unendurable self-restraint, and contentment and 
moderation among men of lower powers and less 
force. Animated by a riglit faith in God, the man 
says, " I will do my duty, let what will happen." He 
leaves the result to God. 

It was in this sense that St. Augustine wrote that 
we " ought to cultivate a willingness to be damned " 
— a readiness to leave mere results to the Great 
Judge and disposer of all. It is because the practice 
of self-denial and the performance of duty leads us 
we cannot know whither in this life, but compels us 
to a course founded on other and higher considera- 
tions than our present welfare, or comfort, or success, 
that we say the chief inducements to this higher and 
Christian life are not the pleasure or indulgence of 
the body, the attainment of '' success," or the grati- 
fication of those desires and passions which we need 
the body to fulfil. 



FAITH AND SCIENCE. 53 



VL 

FAITH AND SCIENCE. 

Several reasons have combined to cause the re- 
cent rapid spread of unbelief in the Christian world. 

The great and wonderful advances in scientific 
discovery made within this century have persuaded 
many unscientific minds that there is now no longer 
any further need for God; which is as though a 
school-boy, having examined the steam-chest, boiler, 
piston-rod and valves of a locomotive - engine, and 
satisfied himself that they all work harmoniously to- 
gether, and with a quite striking adaptation of all 
the parts to a common purpose, should thereupon 
decide that there were undoubtedly no machinists 
or engineers. Though what we know bears but an 
infinitesimal proportion to the sum of knowledge, we 
are constantly ascertaining more and more concern- 
ing the machinery of the universe ; but surely that 
is no valid reason why we should doubt that this 
marvellous and complicated and harmoniously work- 
ing machine had a maker ? 

The rigorous methods necessary for the accurate 



54 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

investigation of material phenomena have established 
a proper habit of doubt, which is sometimes trans- 
ferred, unconsciously it may be, from its true field, 
the inquiry into physical facts, to tlie concerns of 
the spiritual world. Thus we find some men of 
science, though not many, refusing to admit the ex- 
istence of God on the ground that they need not 
consider what they cannot see with their eyes or 
prove in the crucible. 

But to assert that there are none but physical phe- 
nomena is surely the pedantry of science. It is to 
ignore forces which are obvious to all who read his- 
tory, or consider the acts of men, or look into their 
own hearts. That there are moral or spiritual forces 
at work in the world, no one can doubt ; and while 
the naturalist may choose not to investigate these, 
he cannot scientifically deny their existence simply 
because he does not meet with them in the processes 
of his laboratory. Even in physical investigations 
the ultimate facts and most important forces cannot 
be thus proved or identified. 

Mr. Buckle, who had a great but short-lived repu- 
tation before you were born, undertook to show that 
the character of a nation could be predicated from 
the nature of the climate and the fertility of the 
soil where it existed. His argument was, that men 
were merely the creatures of their physical surround- 



FAITH AND SCIENCE. 55 

ings ; but it was shrewdly said of him by one of his 
critics, " He omitted to explain tlie contrast between 
tlie ancient Greek nation and the present one : there 
must have been an extraordinary revolution in the 
climate or the soil." 

He believed that out of the past, if it were closely 
scrutinized, the future might be intelligently pre- 
dicted ; and it seemed to him a point gained for his 
theory w^hen he was able to show statistically that 
out of a thousand letters put into a post-office a cer- 
tain average are sure to be misdirected. But it 
was presently seen that this fact was more curious 
than important, because Mr. Buckle was unable to 
tell us which of the thousand letter-writers blun- 
dered ; and it is the conduct of the individual and 
the fate of the individual which are of real impor- 
tance^ and not those of the aggregate called a society 
or nation. 

Man is undoubtedly affected by his circumstances ; 
but it is important to remember also that he affects 
those circumstances by his character, his will ; and 
that, as it is the individual character and will which 
here come in play, we cannot reason profitably from 
aggregates. For instance, there is no doubt that the 
life of the very poor in our great cities is, in the 
present state of what we call civilization, in many 
ways difficult and debasing. Poverty and depend- 



56 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

ence are real evils, partly because they bring physi- 
cal discomfort and suffering, and deprivation of pleas- 
ures, but mainly because tliey tend to make the life 
mean, and to surround it with morally debasing cir- 
cumstances. Yet no one who has really known even 
the very poor but will tell you that he has found 
among them more self-sacrifice, greater love to the 
neighbor, less greed and covetousness, than among 
the same number of the comfortable and wealthy. 
This is so true, and so imiversally true, that on the 
self-restraint and self-denial of the poor society de- 
pends for its security in all modern states. 

It is not to be doubted that this self-restraint comes 
mainly^ if not altogether, out of their faith in a fut- 
ure life, their continuing trust that there is a God, 
and that he is a just and fatherly being. If you 
could persuade the tenement -house population of 
ISTew York that there is no future life beyond the 
grave, they would sack the Fifth Avenue overnight. 
In all modern countries where faith has been ex- 
pelled by the perversion or debasement of religion, 
and where the thought and hope of the future life 
have measurably died out among the people, we see 
a great increase of armies as a police force, while, co- 
incidently, we see the populations more and more 
given over to the longing for mere bodily enjoy- 
ments, with, at the same time, the continual increase 



FAITH AND SCIENCE. 57 

of discontent and a spirit of mutiny* If you will 
reflect, you must admit that this is only a logical 
result. If there is no future life, if there is no God, 
if after this brief existence comes extinction, why 
should multitudes live in deprivation and want, and 
see the more cunning and unscrupulous few rolling 
in luxury? Why should not the most numerous 
class of society combine against the least numerous, 
and force them to ^^ divide," even if the dividend 
were only of misery ? 

Man is undoubtedly affected by his surroundings, 
but he is not made by them ; he is not their creat- 
ure. If he were he would be only an animal. 

It is possible for the poorest and the most wretch- 
ed to be good. There lies the true democracy. 

If any one objects that you cannot prove, as physi- 
cal facts are proved, that there is a God and a future 
life, your reply is, that those who deny lie under pre- 
cisely the same disability. They, too, must go be- 
yond the senses. They say, " We see nothing, there- 
fore we assert that nothing is there." But you may 
justly ask, " Do you see a vacancy, a hiatus where 
that should lie which we assert?" And they can 
only confess that they cannot tell ; their sight does 
not reach so far. That is the truth. 

Now, even in physical investigations, the fact that 
a phenomenon is not observed is not held to prove 



58 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

its non-occurrence ; and there are sounds which we 
cannot hear; there are heat-rays w^hich we cannot 
feel ; there are worlds in space, and there are minute 
organisms about us, which are alike imperceptible to 
our senses. 

We have looked somewhat into the machinery of 
the universe and are justly proud of the little we 
have found out ; and yet we know scarcely the rudi- 
ments of its laws. The further science penetrates, 
the vaster does it see the field before it to be. The 
more questions are settled, the more — and not the 
less — as every true man of science sees and knows, 
remain unsolved. Scarcely is a new law discovered 
than further research brings into view exceptions 
which become, in their turn, the basis of other laws. 

Do not make the serious mistake, however, of fear- 
ing the advance of science — as though it could, in 
some way, injure religion. All truth is necessarily 
of God ; and no array of facts, no scientific discov- 
ery — which must concern facts and establidi them — 
can possibly injure religious truth. There is no 
" confiict between religion and science." There may 
be a contention between false science and religion, or 
between false religion and science ; but out of that 
can come only good — a clearer demonstration of the 
truth. While on the one hand some men of science 
have rashly said in their hearts, " There is no God," 



FAITH AND SCIENCE. 59 

many truly religious but unscientific persons have, 
for their parts, opposed and denounced scientific in- 
quiry as dangerous to religion. This opposition has 
done and can do no good. It is a pity, for instance, 
that some theologians have undertaken to oppose, 
and sometimes to denounce, the Darwinian theory 
of evolution, as though it attacked first the existence 
of a Creator, and, second, the possession of a spiritual 
nature or being by man. It does neither. It can 
concern itself only with physical facts and phenom- 
ena. The learned botanist, Dr. Asa Gray, himself 
both a true man of science and an earnest Christian, 
has tersely pointed out that the theory of evolution 
considers only "how things go on," and not at all 
"how things began." 

Nor does the inquiry touch the higher or spiritual 
part of man at all. Words often do a curious mis- 
chief, and to many sincere men and women the 
phrase "origin of species" has seemed to denote 
that Mr. Darwin was considering the origin of life 
— which, nevertheless, is as far as possible from the 
truth. Mr. Darwin himself wrote, in his first book : 
" There is grandeur in this view of life, with its 
several powers, having been originally breathed by 
the Creator into a few forms or into one ; and that, 
while this planet has gone cycling on, according to 
the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning 



60 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

endless forms, most beautiful and most wonderful, 
have been and are being evolved." 

Surely the philosopher who wrote thus need not 
be held the enemy of our faith in God ? 



SCIENCE AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 61 



VII. 

SCIENCE AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

The most notable effort of much of the scientific 
investigation of the last quarter of a century or more 
has been to show in how many ways the human race 
are like the beasts. Certainly, it has been clearly 
demonstrated that mankind are very closely and 
wonderfully related to those we call the lower ani- 
mals, so that the reasonable conclusion of science is 
hardly to be doubted, that our bodies are, in fact, 
made on the same general plan as theirs, and appar- 
ently by the same Maker ; that our physical part is 
closely related to theirs ; and that it is not impossible 
nor even improbable — though not scientifically estab- 
lished — that, so far as the human body goes, it may 
have been developed out of the body of some ape, 
who, in his turn, in the course of ages, was devel- 
oped out of some creature far lower in the scale of 
life than himseK. 

Now, those who believe that there is a God, and 
that he is the omnipotent Creator of the universe, 
ought not to deny that, if he wished, he was able 



62 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

to carry on tlie work of creation by tlie method 
supposed by Mr. Darwin ; or that, further, as in our 
belief he is also omniscient, he may in his wisdom 
have seen that this was, on the whole, the best way. 
Certainly, the thought that the Creator was able to 
set in motion, in the very beginning, laws which 
should produce the infinitely varied results we know, 
gives us a higher idea of his admirable genius, if 
that word may be used in such a connection, or of 
his wonderful wisdom and power, than the other 
notion, that he interfered anew at every step in 
the creation, and made now a turtle, and anon a 
mastodon, and still later a rhinoceros, a lion, or a 
monkey. 

Admitting, however, the work of creation to have 
gone on through a single impetus, as Mr. Darwin's 
theory suggests, it by no means follows that God 
ceased thereafter to be an active being, and became 
a nonentity in the universe to which he had given 
that impetus ; or that, as some one lately suggested, 
God, having set the work. of creation agoing by the 
fiat of his will, thereupon committed suicide. 

Nor does it follow that because we are, on the side 
of our bodies, so closely related to the beasts we are, 
therefore, only beasts, or no more than beasts, our- 
selves. This would be taking for granted much 
more than is proved, or even suggested. A person 



SCIENCE AND THE FUTUKE LIFE. 63 

only inoderatelj fcainiliar with machinery might ex- 
amine two compHcated engines, and seeing in both 
a certain number of wheels and other parts much 
alike, might conclude that both machines were un- 
doubtedly intended and made exclusively for the 
same uses. And yet he might be entirely mistaken, 
and his mistake would be shown whenever the two 
machines were set to work, and w^hen one was 
seen to do all the work of the other^ plus other 
work or results of which the first was totally inca- 
pable. 

So, as to men and animals, it is not difficult to 
show that they have a great many parts alike ; that 
in many respects their functions are the same ; that, 
indeed, up to a certain point the two machines are 
curiously and wonderfully similar — and to that ex- 
tent w^e are strangely related to the beasts. But 
when we watch the operations of the two machines 
we are compelled to see that one does w^ork of which 
the other is incapable ; and what is more, that even 
the functions which both have in common are per- 
formed on the whole better and more effectively by 
man than by the beasts. 

"VVe see that the animals fulfil all their functions 
completely here in this life. They eat, drink, and 
multiply, and they seek to do no more. Some of 
them do not even fulfil these ends as ])erfectly in 



64: GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

that independent condition which we call their nat- 
ural state as when they are under the care of man ; 
but in their best condition not only do they do no 
more than this : they have no higher desires or aspi- 
rations. All that is possible to them is accomplished 
in their narrow span of existence here. 

Now, we have only to look at mankind to see that 
with us matters are not only different, but enormous- 
ly so. Even as to our mastery of the conditions of 
life on this planet and in these bodies we are su- 
perior to the beasts. Animals as well as plants are 
able to live only within certain limits of climate, 
or soil, or both, each kind having its bounds fixed, 
apparently, outside of which it ceases to exist. Man 
alone has been able not only to live but to think in 
all climates and on all soils, and has been able to do 
this violence to a law of nature which, to a degree, 
controls his body as it does those of the beasts, by an 
inborn power of protecting liimseK against the rig- 
ors of change. Here the one machine seems clearly 
to be superior to the other even in those parts which 
are similar. Animals make no advances in the arts 
of living — of physical living, I mean ; they display 
merely a very limited, though often curious, and al- 
ways interesting, power of adapting themselves to 
new circumstances, as where a bird changes the form 
of her nest because the more usual form would not 



SCIENCE AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 65 

be convenient or safe for the place where she is im^ 
pelled to rear her young. Man, on the other hand, 
unceasingly reaches forward on this line. Animals 
are confined to certain kinds of food — some are car- 
nivorous, some graminivorous ; man, alone, except 
where he has forcibly trained the cat or dog to do 
violence to its natural tastes, is omnivorous. 

In these and many other respects man is, even as 
to his body, essentially abler than the beasts; but 
when we come to consider the qualities of his mind, 
here man not merely rises, as we see, above the 
beasts : he is, so far as that is concerned, a creature 
of an entirely different kind ; he has faculties, pow- 
ers, qualities, aspirations, which are not possessed by 
the animals ; of which they have no trace. 

The difference here is not of degree, but of kind. 
To return to the illustration of two machines : here 
we discover that the one machine, already doing bet- 
ter than the other the work common to the two, now 
does in addition work, and produces results, of which 
the other is totally incapable, and which is of an im- 
measurably higher order. 

To prove that, so far as his body goes, man is only 
and exactly an animal, neither more nor less, could 
thus only make clearer to the scientific mind the ex- 
treme importance and the essential distinction of 
those qualities and faculties which man alone pos- 



66 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

sesseS) and in fact lessens the probability that he has, 
as to his intellectual parts, been "evolved" from the 
animal creation. 

The splendid generalization of Darwin has dazzled 
and fascinated scientific men, as well it might ; but 
no one would be readier than its author, I believe, to 
acknowledge that while it does not at all concern the 
spiritual part of man, but only his body, it does not, 
even as a physical theory, explain or account for all 
the facts of physical life ; as, to take only a single in- 
stance, the various, and yet in each case apparently 
fixed, periods assigned by the Creator to the lives of 
animals, and plants as well. 

Why, for instance, are some plants annuals, some 
perennials? Why may the oak live a thousand 
years, while many other plants live but a year ? 
Why is a dog's limit of life fifteen, or, at most, and 
in exceptional instances, twenty years, and a parrot's 
a hundred? Why does a horse live but thirty or 
forty years, an elephant seventy or eighty, and a 
crow still longer? Why is the natural limit of life 
so varied in creatures essentially similar in structure, 
built on the same general plan ? 

But you see here, what was pointed out to you 
above, that the inquirer into natural phenomena is 
like a woodman in a boundless forest — each tree he 
fells only opens to him new and unsuspected vistas. 



SCIENCE AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 67 

Darwin showed that individuals produce their 
like, with slight possible differences which may, un- 
der favoring conditions, become permanent ; and for 
nearly a quarter of a century scientific men have 
been busily engaged in proving this hypothesis, and 
ascertaining how much ground it would cover. But 
Dr. Gray, himself a Darwinian, justly remarks that, 
after all, "the great primary law of inheritance re- 
mains a mysterious fact." 

The stimulus which the publication of Mr. Dar- 
win's first book gave to the faithful and accurate 
study of natural phenomena is one of the very great 
services he rendered to the lovers of knowledge. 
But some men of science begin to see that it might 
be useful now to look at the other side — to take 
equal pains to discover and record those cases and 
phenomena which the theory of evolution does Qiot 
cover. In this way science might perhaps hit upon 
some other laws, less important, but yet important 
as laws, which, in fixing its eye too closely upon one 
law alone, it may have overlooked. Thus, the dis- 
coverer of a great river might, in the eagerness of 
his zeal, follow its course thousands of miles to its 
distant head among the mountains; nor should we 
blame him. But he would deserve still more of man- 
kind, and especially of geographers, if he should later 
also undertake the exploration of its tributaries. And 



68 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

while he might find that the Ohio, the Ciimber- 
land, the Arkansas, the Eed river were, after all, but 
pigmy streams compared with the great Father of 
Waters, still, in exploring them he would have done 
the important work of marking the great water- 
sheds of the continent. And when he came to the 
Missouri he might well stop, amazed, and wonder 
which of the two mighty streams at whose con- 
fluence he stood was the river, and which its af- 
fluent. 

It now seems probable that the theory of evolu- 
tion may represent the mighty Mississippi among the 
laws which have been set to control, in the wisdom 
of God, not the origin or beginning but the going 
on or development of things. But there may be 
other and tributary laws whose existence is still 
unsuspected, but which science will begin to look 
for whenever it takes its eye off the discovery which 
for a generation has charmed and fascinated it ; when 
it acknowledges that evolution answer&_many ques- 
tions, but not all, even in its legitimate domain. 

You are, however, to remember that what science 
calls "laws" are only fornmlae deduced from obser- 
vation, and intended to tell us that, given certain 
circumstances or collocations of things, and certain 
results will follow. Observation has shown, for in- 
stance, that the law of gravitation, as it is called, by 



SCIENCE AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 69 

wliieli every material body tends to approacli toward 
every otlier material body witb a certain determinate 
force, is of universal application ; so far as we know, 
on it depends the stability not of our system mere- 
ly, but of the universe. But why this is so no one 
knows. We know, to come to lesser " laws," that 
among the beasts all ruminants, and they alone, have 
the foot cleft, and that only among this class are 
frontal horns found. Wide observation has shown 
this to be so invariable that the naturalist, seeing 
the imprint of a cleft foot, knows at once the de- 
tails of structure of the animal which left it; and 
Cuvier, when he saw in a nightmare a vision of the 
conventional devil, exclaimed with contempt, "Horns 
and hoofs! No, you are not carnivorous." But 
why the cleft foot should be the invariable mark of 
a particular order of animals — why with that should 
go teeth, bones, digestive apparatus of a peculiar 
form — ^no one knows. 

We have ascertained that certain usually solid sub- 
stances melt at certain fixed temperatures — that we 
call a law ; but Ave do not know why they are thus 
peculiarly subject to the influence of a certain, and 
in most cases differing, temperature. We know that 
almost but not entirely all fluids expand as they are 
made hotter, and contract as they are made colder, 
but we do not know why this is so. Nor do we 



70 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

know why water forms one of the exceptions to this 
general law ; although we do know that on the fact 
that water expands instead of contracting when it 
becomes ice depend many of the most important 
natural phenomena, and that if the contrary hap- 
pened — why it should not we do not know — not 
only would the disintegration of rocks and other 
important effects in the great laboratory of nature 
be stopped or checked, but our planet would not 
even be habitable, because of immense and constant- 
ly increasing accumulations of ice in the oceans and 
streams, where, contracting as it formed, it would 
sink to the bottom and remain ice, instead of float- 
ing on the surface, to be melted by the sun's rays. 

The fact that we are able to discover laws accord- 
ing to which the infinite variety of material objects 
about us is arranged and subsists shows us, however, 
that the universe is not a disorderly or hap-hazard 
aggregation of things. Order supposes an ordering 
mind; and the astronomer Herschel shrewdly re- 
marked that the universe bore to him all the marks 
of a "manufactured article" — a product — a some- 
thing which did not merely haj^pen, but was done 
on purpose. 

Science, far from eliminating God, proves that 
there must have been a God — one God — one su- 
preme ordering mind, not several ; a Creator intel- 



SCIENCE AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 71 

ligent, in the sense of far-seeing — capable, as the 
Bible says, of seeing the end from the beginning; 
wise enough to foresee the remotest effects of the 
laws He put in operation by His will, and to choose, 
also, out of perhaps an infinite number of methods 
that one which to Him seemed best. For science has 
demonstrated that the universe might, in some de- 
tails, at least, have been differently constituted from 
what it is ; and therefore, that the Creator must have 
exercised a choice is intelligible even to such finite 
minds as ours. 

Why God made the choice He did we do not know. 
Our senses are too dull even to grasp all those phe- 
nomena of nature the probability of which we are 
able to perceive. Our bodily senses are th^ modes by 
which the Creator has enabled us in this life to ap- 
prehend what goes on; but science has established 
the wonderful fact that there may be, and undoubted- 
ly are, phenomena bej^ond the reach of these senses. 
Thus, sound vibrations of more than thirty -eight 
thousand strokes per second are inaudible to most 
human ears, though some few can detect a some- 
what higher pitch. But physicists see no reason to 
doubt that there may be sound vibrations all about 
us of such rapidity as to be entirely inaudible to our 
ears ; and it is now suspected, though not known, that 
to some insects these rapid vibrations, inaudible to us, 



72 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

are so well apprehended as to be for them means 
of intercommunication. Again, there are rays at 
both ends of the spectrum which onr senses do not 
directly perceive — thermal rays which are apparent 
to US only by help of the thermometer, because they 
do not give light to our eyes, but give out only heat ; 
and at the other end color rays to which our vision 
is equally insensible, but whose existence is estab- 
lished for us by their chemical action. But science 
gives no reason to believe, and scientific men do not 
assert, that we know the absolute limit of the spec- 
trum at either end. The range of sound and of 
color is, therefore, certainly much greater than we 
recognize through the senses. 

Thus, while on the one hand we see clearly that 
our powers of observation are limited by the limita- 
tions of our bodily senses, on the other we just as 
clearly perceive, in these and other instances, that 
there is a world, even a physical world, beyond our 
ken ; that the universe which we can explore with 
the help of our bodily senses and organs is but a 
part — who can tell how large or how small a part ? — 
of the entire creation ; that not only is there some- 
thing beyond, but even that there may be things in 
our immediate presence and surroundings which are 
not to us known, because our bodily Senses are unfit- 
ted to recognize them. 



SCIENCE AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 73 

To assert, therefore, on scientific grounds, first, 
that there is no God, and, second, that there is no 
future life attainable by us, would be extremely 
rash, and plainly contrary to reason. It would be to 
argue that a vast collection of things, the most re- 
markable quality of which is the orderliness with 
which they are all arranged, is proof that they were 
never arranged at all, but came about by mere hap- 
hazard. And it would be to argue that because even 
in physical inquiries we must acknowledge that 
there are objects and phenomena beyond our per- 
ception, therefore we are to disbelieve in a future 
life for our spiritual parts, highly probable though 
unprovable, unless we have proof submitted to our 
bodily senses. 

On the contrary, scientific investigation, the far- 
ther it reaches out, only makes the existence of God 
and the survival of our souls after the death of the 
body the more reasonable hypothesis. That the ma- 
terial universe should have had a Creator, an intelli- 
gent, foreseeing, and planning constructor, all science 
shows to be, at the least, very much more probable 
than that so orderly, harmoniously acting, and won- 
derful a machine should have come about by mere 
chance. That the Creator, having set this vast and 
complicated machinery in motion, should then have 
abdicated or committed suicide, is so violent and im- 



74 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

probable a supposition, that you have a right to de- 
mand positive proof before entertaining it. _ Finally, 
that we have desires, capacities for knowledge and 
enjoyment and usefulness which our present phys- 
ical life is greatly inadequate to enable us to fulfil, 
while it is by no means a positive proof of a future 
life, is certainly, so far as it goes, an indication ; and 
we may rightfully require those who deny the fut- 
ure life to account for these desires and capacities, 
and put upon them the burden of proving their as- 
sertion; because the probability is strongly against 
them. 

If we find the theory of a future life entirely in 
harmony with the known laws of our being ; if it is 
furthermore required for the welfare, and even the 
existence, of human society on this planet ; if it con- 
forms with the other phenomena which we observe 
in ourselves and in nature, or at least if it offends 
none, we may safely and even scientifically maintain 
that this theory shall be held true — until it is dis- 
proved. 

But observe that those who deny are the very men 
who admit that no proof, in the sense demanded in 
physical investigations, is attainable by them on this 
subject. They have no evidence to produce on their 
side. 



THE LIMITS OF SPECULATION. 75 



VIII. 

THE LIMITS OF SPECULATION. 

If the world was made by God, instead of hap- 
pening by chance, we may, I think, believe that He 
had some purpose or design in the making of it. 
What we thus conceive of Him in regard to the 
general creation, there is a disposition in the human 
mind to hold also of details. The animals live their 
lives without thought of such whys and wherefores. 
The pig contentedly eats his acorns, and does not 
even look up into the oak to see whence his supplies 
are dropping ; and a cow at pasture does not trouble 
herself about the origin of the grass; and if she 
thought about it at all, which she does not, would 
no doubt be quite satisfied that it was made for her 
to eat ; or, to put the matter in the language of 
philosophers, that to be eaten by a cow was the 
"final cause" of the grass. 

If you should assert that the real "final cause" 
of the grass was to be turned by the cow into milk 
and butter for your own use, you would go only a 
short step further than the cow, in precisely the same 
direction ; and you might not be any nearer a right 



76 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

guess at the purposes of the Creator. But the fact is, 
the mind of man is prone to such guesses and spec- 
ulations, and this is one of the particulars in which 
we are very widely distinguished from the beasts. 

We strive to penetrate the Divine intentions. 

It is as well to do this modestly — remembering 
the vast difference between the Creator's infinite 
intelligence and our own finite minds. But because 
a child is pretty certain to reason wrongly and in- 
conclusivel}^ concerning the actions of its parents 
we need not forbid it to reason at all. E'or, on the 
other hand, if a boy should conclude that he could 
not comprehend the reasons which controlled the 
acts of his father would he be warranted in assert- 
ing that the father had no reasons or purpose at all. 

Undoubtedly the discussion of the Divine purpose 
is apt to mislead us, and is often futile; and we 
need not find fault with some philosophers and men 
of science if they are as irritable at the mention of 
"final causes" as a bull at the exhibition of a red 
rag. They assert that the argument of design is 
only a vicious reasoning in a circle ; and some mod- 
ern men of science profess to show us that there is 
no firm ground at all for the ascription of purpose to 
the Creator, if there was a Creator ; that the eye, for 
instance, was not made to see with, because, as they 
assert, it came about by a course of slow develop- 



THE LIMITS OF SPECULATION. 77 

ment of optic nerves and other parts out of the 
vesicular structure of some originally non-seeing an- 
imal. They tell us that the first crude germ of vi- 
sion was a nerve in some zoophite which chanced 
to be affected by or was susceptible to light rays; 
that the advantage in the struggle for life gained by 
the creature possessing even the dimmest vision was 
so great that it w^as better able to escape destruction 
than its non-seeing companions, and that thus the 
power or faculty of vision was preserved with its 
possessor, and in some unexplained way developed 
and perfected in the course of ages. 

Now, if you will think a moment you will see 
that this, after all, is only an account of how these 
philosophers suppose the eye to have come about; 
and if they could scientifically establish the truth of 
their supposition this would by no means prove that 
the Creator had no design in the matter, or that, in 
fact, the purpose of the eye, its final cause, was not 
to see with. If a carpenter should explain to you the 
various processes by which he had evolved a chair 
out of a tree, which had first to grow, then to be 
cut down, then to be sawed into lumber, parts of 
which were finally, with a good deal more detail, 
fashioned into a chair, all this would not bear upon 
the question whether or no the " final cause " of the 
chair was to be sat on. 



78 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

God need not have made a nerve susceptible to 
light rays. He need not have made this susceptible 
nerve capable, in the course of ages, of becoming the 
perfect eye with which we see. To describe to us 
the process by which the eye was formed obviously 
does not tell us anything whatever of the purpose 
or design of him who caused its formation. 

Mr. Darwin, who never goes too far in his reason- 
ing, asks, " May we not believe that [by gradual de- 
velopment] a living optical instrument might be 
thus formed, as superior to one of glass as the works 
of the Creator are to those of man ?" You notice 
that he does not exclude design, but, on the con- 
trary, plainly includes it. He argues only that the 
designer, God, preferred a particular way of form- 
ing the eye ; and on that matter you may without 
harm take the knowledge and research of so great 
and careful an investigator as Darwin for your guide. 

There is, however, some ground for the scientific 
man's hostility to the argument from design. It 
has often been carried to extremes; it has some- 
times barred the way of scientific research ; and we 
ought not to forget that there is a certain imperti- 
nence in our readiness to explain the meaning and 
intentions of the Creator. That the eye was made 
to enable us to see seems to us clear enough ; that 
our hands are marvellously fitted by intricate struct- 



THE LIMITS OF SPECULATION. 79 

lire to do the work to which we put them is unde- 
niable. But there are what anatomists and botanists 
call " functionless organs," which, in the animals and 
plants which possess them, have no apparent uses, 
and which speak to us rather of a distant past, or 
perhaps of a more distant future, than of the pres- 
ent. And while we may reasonably strive to dis- 
cover, also, the purpose of their present occurrence, 
a modest distrust of our own limited powers should 
make us cautious where we are dealing with infinite 
wisdom and power. 

It was a laughable instance of misapprehension 
when a child admired the wisdom of Providence in 
causing large rivers to flow past great cities — for 
we all see that the cities were subsequent to the 
rivers, and man only took advantage of what he 
found created to his hand. It might be to little 
more purpose for you to argue that God made rivers 
to facilitate internal commerce and communication 
between nations. It is enough for us that we find 
them useful for this important end. To recur to 
the case of water, of which I spoke in the last 
chapter : we see clearly enough that on the fact that 
water expands in freezing, contrary to a very gen- 
eral though not universal law, depends to a large 
extent the habitableness of our planet. I think we 
may reasonably admire the wisdom of the Creator 



80 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

in giving this somewhat exceptional law to water ; 
and we may even suppose that he took this way, 
out of a number which he might have used, to make 
the earth habitable and pleasant to such creatures as 
it contains. 

But if, now, a plumber should come in and assume 
that water had been caused to exnand in freezing; 
in order that he might have the profit of mending 
bursted water-pipes, you would justly regard this 
as a very silly deduction. 

It is possible and probable that the Creator had 
not one but many purposes in view in any one of 
the laws he established ; that of these purposes some 
were present, others remote; some evident, others 
recondite ; and that while the attempt to define for 
ourselves his designs in every phenomenon we ob- 
serve about us is a tempting intellectual exercise, 
it must be, for the most part, sterile of results : be- 
cause a finite mind strives in vain to penetrate the 
secrets of his infinite intelligence. 

When we come to ask why, we run our heads at 
once against so many impenetrable mysteries that 
the wisest draw back with awe, and wait patiently 
for the clearer insight we may hope for in another 
life, where we shall be disencumbered of our bodies 
— those organs which we may there discover to have 
been to us more of a hinderance than even a help 



THE LIMITS OF SPECULATION. 81 

to knowledge. In these matters also, as Paul finely 
says, "Here we see as in a glass darkly, but there 
face to face" — here we see dimly, as the reflection 
in a mirror of an object lying behind us ; but tliere 
by direct vision. 

Here we see more and more of the wonderful way 
in which things go on — but, so far, we have not got 
even the faintest glimpse of how things began. We 
discover some of the laws, as we call them, in obedi- 
ence to which the universe became and remains an 
orderly and harmoniously working machine ; but we 
know absolutely nothing of why these laws are as 
they are, much less why they are not otherwise. 

These limitations of our knowledge, which yet do 
not exclude us from knowing that there is an infi- 
nite field of investigation before us, are justly held 
to give us a promise of continued existence — to make 
a life beyond the grave more probable than that we 
should perish with our bodies. If we could know 
all here, we might reasonably apprehend that this 
life, thus filled and rounded, was all that remains to 
us. As for the lower animals, which fulfil all their 
functions in this life, no other is necessary: so it 
might be with us higher beings, if w^e also, in this 
life, could consciously fulfil all our functions, and 
complete our possibilities. 

6 



82 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 



IX. 

MORAL AS WELL AS PHYSICAL LAWS. 

We speak of moral as well as physical laws ; but 
while all created things are alike and peremptorily 
subject to those general rules which we call physi- 
cal laws, man is the only creature who is subject to 
moral laws. The beasts have neither morality nor 
immorality ; they simply follow their impulses. It 
would be as absurd to talk of an immoral horse or 
lion as of an immoral oak or elm. To man alone is 
given the choice between good and evil. "We speak 
sometimes, to be sure, of a thieving cat, or dog, or 
raven, but we do not apply the term in the same 
sense as to a man ; nor do we hold an animal to the 
same responsibility. 

Moral laws appear for us to have come in with 
the creation of man. The tree of the knowledge 
of good and evil, the Bible tells us, grew in Para- 
dise ; it appeared there simultaneously with the first 
human pair. Whether you take this Bible state- 
ment literally, or regard it as a picturesque and 
poetical statement, it is nevertheless true — just as 



MORAL AS WELL AS PHYSICAL LAWS. 83 

true as that other Bible generalization, that " in the 
sweat of his face shall man eat his bread," or as 
hundreds of equally striking and deeply significant 
truths with which it is filled. 

You consider a physical or natural law established 
when all the phenomena which it should afiect are 
duly affected by it, so far as our experiments can de- 
velop this fact. We hold the law of gravitation to 
be established, for instance, because research and ex- 
periment have shown that the smallest stone is no 
no more nor less subject to it than the largest planet. 

But, setting aside the moral law as revealed and 
enforced upon us in the Scriptures, how are you to 
determine what is right and what is wrong? Mur- 
der, for instance, the first crime, the first offence 
against the moral law of the commission of which we 
have any account — murder, you say, is undoubtedly 
wrong. But how can you prove this ? Consider 
for a moment. Why should you not kill a person 
who stands in the way of the object you have at 
heart — of your success in some plan of life, your ri- 
val in love, or in ambition, or in business, and likely 
to be your successful rival ? A single life stands be- 
tween you and your most cherished object in life — 
why not destroy it? why not kill the man — poison 
him secretly, let us say — and thus attain your object ? 
Leave out of view, please, the dread of discovery, 



84 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

and of disgrace and punisliment ; for we are now dis- 
cussing the question whether there ought to be dis- 
grace and punishment at all for murder. Whether, 
instead of secretly poisoning your rival, you should 
not, if you are strong enough, openly knock him on 
the head ? 

Why should you not kill him, and thus insure 
success ? 

Or, to put the question on a broader base, why 
should we not kill the maimed, the crippled, the 
helpless, and the criminal classes? A pauper or a 
tramp is a useless creature — he produces nothing, 
and subsists idly on the labors and earnings of oth- 
ers, who are the poorer for his continued life. The 
maimed, the crippled, the deaf and dumb, the blind, 
the insane, those who are unable to earn their own 
subsistence, and are a charge upon their friends or 
on society, and often a heavy and grievous burden — 
why should we not kill them ? The criminal class, 
the depredators on society, who makejour lives un- 
easy and rob us of our hardly-earned savings : why 
should we not kill them? "We poison dogs which 
have contracted a passion for the blood of sheep. 
We trap foxes and weasels which invade our hen- 
roosts. But the burglar or pick -pocket is only a 
more noxious creature than the sheep-killing dog; 
the swindler or forger is only a more able and more 



MORAL AS WELL AS PHYSICAL LAWS. 85 

dangerous weasel. Wliy do we build prisons and 
reformatories for these people, and maintain hospi- 
tals and asylums for the helpless class ? 

You will, perhaps, say that such humanity is nec- 
essary to the existence of society. But this is not 
certain ; and if it were, why should you care about 
society? If you are strong, why should you trouble 
yourself about the weak, the helpless, or suffer your- 
self to be troubled by the vicious ? A child is born 
into the world weakly or deformed ; why should not 
the parents kill it, and thus save themselves from a 
painful and costly charge — a burden lasting they can- 
not tell how many years, and entailing very great 
deprivations and discomfort? An aged person lies 
bedridden, and sure to die after a while ; why not 
save a great deal of trouble and annoyance by kill- 
ing him at once ? A thousand soldiers lie wounded 
on the field, and the care of them exposes the com- 
mander to the loss of the campaign ; he cannot pur- 
sue or he cannot evade the enemy, because these 
helpless men cumber his movements. Why not kill 
them? Why hazard success, fame, glory, perhaps 
the cause for which he is fighting, by stopping to 
dress their wounds, to house them comfortably, to 
care for their recovery ? 

Human laws, you will say, forbid such barbarities. 
But human laws are only the enactments of a tem- 



86 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

porary majority ; tliey arc constantly changing and 
changed. Why should they not be entirely made 
over in the plain interests of the general peace and 
prosperity? Consider how secure you would feel 
if all the criminal classes, great and small, were 
hanged up out of the way; how much less your 
taxes, and how much greater your prosperity and 
that of society at large would be, if all the paupers 
and other helpless people were quietly smothered, 
and we could sell the jails, hospitals, and asylums, 
to be turned into summer hotels and watering-places. 

Society would go to pieces, you repeat. That is 
by no means certain ; but if it did, what need you 
care for society? You have a strong desire for 
happiness; is it not rank injustice that "society" 
should impose rules which at every step, almost, 
interfere with your pursuit of happiness? Why 
should you suffer such injustice ? and not you alone, 
but all those members of society who, like you, are 
strong, able, shrewd, energetic, and, so -being, have 
the keener desire for those things which seem to 
you and them to constitute good-fortune, happiness ? 

When I speak to you of poisoning, of infanticide, 
of killing off the paupers, the maimed, blind, and 
deaf and dumb, of hanging up the whole criminal 
class, and closing asylums and reformatories, I shock 
you; but let us follow the matter a little further. 



MORAL AS WELL AS PHYSICAL LAWS. 87 

A man and woman marry ; tliey have children ; the 
man tires of his wife, who has lost her beauty and 
freshness to him in caring for the children and the 
household. He sees other women who please him 
more ; or he feels that but for these family burdens 
he might rapidly acquire a fortune, or lead an easier 
or a more varied life, or even make a great career. 
Why should he not please himself? Or, on the 
other hand, the woman tires of her humdrum life 
of unceasing care ; her husband neglects or no lon- 
ger pleases her ; she sees another man who appears 
to her a more agreeable companion. Why should 
she not abandon husband and children and please 
herself ? 

We are coming now, observe, to a less unusual 
instance. You are less shocked, but only because 
the case is not so uncommon in your newspaper 
reading, where a husband abandons his wife, or a 
wife her husband; and there has been a strong 
pressure, for many years, upon law - making bodies 
to make divorce easier, and not without success in 
many of our States, and in some European countries. 
That the two sexes should consort together at their 
pleasure, and without such bonds and restraints as 
the moral law imposes, and as legal regulations in al- 
most all states still provide, is the contention of a 
considerable number of men and women here and 



88 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

in Europe, who have argued for their view in books 
and public addresses. Why are they not right ? If 
you object that on their plan society would go to 
pieces, they reply that it would not ; and if it did, 
they ask why are they bound to be unhappy as in- 
dividuals in order to benefit society — an aggregation 
of people, that is to say, whom they do not know, 
and for whom they do not care ? 

Even this latter instance, however, offends you. 
It is not usual to see men and women abandon their 
family ties; and disgust hinders you from consid- 
ering this case on its merits, so to speak. Let me 
take another, still connnoner. A shrewd, capable, 
and determined man of business — a merchant, let us 
say — sees that certain competitors stand between 
him and wealth. He does not kill them, because it 
is still the fashion to hang people for murder ; but 
he ruins them. One after the other he brings them 
to bankruptcy, and so gathers into his own hands 
the whole commerce which had engaged them and 
maintained them. Here, at last, we have a case 
which human laws do not touch, and which is com- 
mon enough. What do you think of it ? 

You call him selfish and unscrupulous, and you 
detest him. But why should you ? It was by the 
use of superior cunning that he gained the object 
nearest his heart — great wealth. Why should he not 



MORAL AS WELL AS PHYSICAL LAWS. 89 

do tliis? It was necessary to his happiness to be 
very wealthy ; or, at least, that was his belief. Why 
should he let foolish and weak scruples stand in the 
way of his desires ? He did not know the men he 
ruined; why should he regard them? ^^Live and 
let live!" you exclaim; but he replies, "All baggage 
at the risk of the owner ;" and why is he not right ? 
Undoubtedly his brutal selfishness violates the moral 
law; but why should he observe the moral law? 
There is no penalty here, in this life, for its breach. 

Society, you say, will go to pieces if such mere 
self-seeking becomes the rule, and if, to alter an old 
rhyme, " He may take who has the cunning, and he 
must keep who can ;" and you add that every indi- 
vidual example of such conduct is debasing to the 
young and the morally weak who see it. But he 
replies, "What do I care for society? I want 
wealth, and the honors and predominance which 
much money gives. I care nothing about society. 
' Every man for himself, and the devil take the hind- 
most.' Besides," he adds, " it is all twaddle about so- 
ciety going to pieces. Society can be kept together 
by soldiers with the modern arms of precision. 
When I see society attempting to go to pieces I 
call loudly for tlie Seventh Eegiment, and I notice 
that society settles down at once." 

If this life of the body with its desires and neces- 



90 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

sities is all we have to live, the question of morals is 
certainly one open to every man's decision on his 
own views of what will make him happiest ; and he 
is entitled to judge for himself. If he is strong 
enough he may destroy or subdue all the weak about 
him, for it is the happiness of the strong man to ex- 
ercise his strength and power. If he is ambitious 
enough he may, to secure his own desires, or to 
wreak his own revenges, destroy the state of which 
he is a part, for to the ambitious man his own aims 
are more precious than the good of his fellow-men. 
If he is cunning enough he may ruin all his compet- 
itors in business, and thus build up a vast fortune. 
If there is no future life for us, self-restraint, self- 
denial, are mere follies; Hampdens and Washing- 
tons are visionaries and dreamers ; Caesars and Na- 
poleons are the real men. 

Those who deny the existence of God and a future 
life strive in vain to justify the restraints on the pas- 
sions and propensities of mankind imposed by what 
we call moral laws. The ablest and most logical of 
them seek refuge in the assertion that we are to sac- 
rifice our inclinations for the benefit of some future 
society; they draw for us pleasing pictures of the 
perfection and happiness at which the human race 
may arrive in some distant period, if more and more 
of us can only be persuaded to sacrifice our own 



MORAL AS WELL AS PHYSICAL LAWS. 91 

comfoi't and happiness in order that our remote de- 
scendants five or six thousand years hence may have 
easier and happier lives. 

But the argument of such a vague, distant, and 
general benefit is capable of attracting only those 
few who are already, naturally or by training, in- 
clined to be good. It has no force upon the minds 
of the selfish strong, or the selfish weak. It does 
not control the strong man's will, or tempt him to 
hold his hand against the weak. Why should he or 
what does he care for future and distant generations 
of men? He has strong passions, the gratification 
of which is necessary to his happiness here — and he 
is assured that there is no life for him beyond this 
of the body. This is, therefore, his only opportunity 
for enjoyment, for gratification, for happiness. The 
sentiment of pity may stay his purpose, but he will 
not be detained from working his will upon his fel- 
low-creatures by consideration of how his actions 
may influence the condition of society in distant 
ages. We see in many instances that such a strong 
man is not even greatly restrained by the thought of 
his own immediate and closest friends. 

As to the weak — the great mass who have little or 
no hope of wealth, or fame, or power — deprive them 
of the future life, and they must seek their consola- 
tion or reward here, in the flesh-pots of Egypt — in 



92 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

the " bread and shows " of the Eoman multitude ; in 
amusements and distractions of a merely or mainly 
animal kind — in the selfish search after bodily com- 
fort and ease. 

We are forced to include the future life — the life 
of the soul beyond the grave — if we desire to justify 
to ourselves or to others the supreme restraining au- 
thority of moral laws, on which, observe, all just and 
beneficent human laws are founded. " Thou shalt 
not kill," says the law of Moses ; and as though fore- 
seeing that the children of Israel, long corrupted and 
debased in pagan bondage, needed something much 
more forcible and impressive than a mere appeal for 
social order, this and the other Commandments were 
delivered amid the thunders of Sinai, and as the im- 
perative commands of God. " Thou shalt not kill," 
says the law of Moses, and thus guards the weak 
against the strong, and enables the foundation of 
a human society. But "Thou shalt not call thy 
brother a fool," says Jesus, recalling our attention 
to the higher purpose of self-restraint — to the ne- 
cessity of guarding and training our spiritual part 
for the future life. 

Observe that Jesus, with that divine and search- 
ing wisdom which was His alone, struck at the vices 
which corrupt the spirit — malice, envy, hypocrisy, 
anger, hatred, all forms of selfishness. " Thou shalt 



MORAL AS WELL AS PHYSICAL LAWS. 93 

not call thy brother a fool" — not because that hurts 
him, but because it hurts you 'y because it gratifies 
and fosters somewhat in your own soul debasing to 
it, and unfitting it for higher things. So, envy may 
not affect your neighbor, but it corrodes your own 
soul. So, hypocrisy, it has been said, is " the hom- 
age which vice pays to virtue;" it has sometimes 
been described as even a social virtue; but Jesus 
never ceased to denounce the hypocrites — the " whited 
sepulchres, fair and smooth without, but full of rot- 
tenness within." 

" It is more blessed to give than to receive," said 
He, again ; and if " the poor we have always with us," 
as undoubtedly we shall have until society is Chris- 
tianized, it is that our own hearts may be softened, 
and our love and sympathy kept alive by helping 
them. Always, in every way. He appealed to the 
inner man, and required that the soul, the immortal 
part, be cleansed and kept alive to all good and high 
thoughts and things. For the externals he cared 
so little that his life seemed scandalous to the 
"scribes and pharisees." Bodily comfort, ease, en- 
joyment he made little of, though he was by no 
means an ascetic. But as He came to deliver to us 
the doctrine of a future and eternal life, as He saw 
with His divine eyes clearly the relations of this life 
to the other, so He ever insisted on those things 



94 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

wliicli are needed to prepare our spirits for that 
other life in which we are to live without the bonds, 
and also without the help, of the body. Therefore 
He taught self-restraint, self-denial, the curbing and 
rooting out of evil passions and desires, the denial 
to the body of the gratifications of our senses, be- 
cause He saw that thus only can we train our 
spirits for the higher life beyond the grave. 

Thus, His teaching, though some found it "hard," 
was utterly reasonable. It urged, only in a vastly 
more important field and aspect, what a thoughtful 
father impresses upon his son going to college, or to 
a trade : " Use this opportunity to prepare yourself 
for the real life which is to come to you hereafter 
— after this period of privation and exertion. Deny 
yourself now, in these student or apprentice years, 
that you may hereafter be a man amongst men." 

But, leave out the future life which was the con- 
stant burden of His speech and thoughts, and the 
social theory of Jesus is only foolishness — an over- 
wrought sentimentalism as it has been called in our 
days by men who, rejecting the future life, naturally 
and logically reject, also, the admonitions for the 
conduct of our present and bodily lives which Jesus 
delivered. 

Eeject the future life beyond the grave, eliminate 
it from our thoughts and beliefs, and what we call 



MORAL AS WELL AS PHYSICAL LAWS. 95 

goodness becomes merely a "matter of choice" — a 
thing to be determined for society by the vote of 
tlie majority for the time being, and for the indi- 
vidual by what happens to be most to his taste. 

If you urge that, nevertheless, " goodness," self-sac- 
rifice, love to the neighbor, restraint of the physical 
passions and appetites, are so necessary to society 
that without these that could not long endure, this 
is only to say that, in the Divine Providence, that 
which is best for the individual beyond the grave 
is best for the aggregate we call society here. But 
consider what a strange confusion in the Divine 
thought it would argue — what a singular break in 
the general harmony we should discover, if, for in- 
stance, honesty were not the best policy in this life, 
but only in the next ! 



96 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 



X. 

THE BIBLE AS A BOOK. 

AiMOxa books it is from the Bible that we draw 
the most of our ideas of God and the future life. 
It is a great collection of books, some very ancient, 
some less so, but all admitted by critics to be of 
great age, and among the oldest writings preserved 
to our days. 

I should like you to read the Bible not merely as 
a book of devotion, but as you would other books of 
the highest interest and importance. Like other an- 
cient writings, though not more but rather less so, its 
style in some of the books will seem to you often 
strange, and sometimes dry. But I notice that those 
who have most carefully and even critically studied 
it are the most positive in their praises of its extraor- 
dinary literary excellence. 

If you read it with the intelligent curiosity which 
it deserves, you will discover that it has astonishing 
merits of many kinds — literary, historical, poetical; 
and that there is no part of it which does not de- 
serve and reward a careful study, aside entirely from 



THE BIBLE AS A BOOK. 97 

its importance as a guide to our moral or spiritual 
lives. This has been the opinion of the greatest 
poets and the most deeply cultivated minds in all 
countries, and their judgment is worthy of your re- 
spect. ]^o thoughtful person, if he regards only the 
affairs of the present life, can even glance superfi- 
cially over this great collection without a feeling of 
admiration and wonder ; and when you hear a per- 
son speak slightingly or contemptuously of the Bi- 
ble you may safely set him down as an ignoramus. 

To speak only of superficials, nowhere in litera- 
ture do we find such biographies as are in the Bible : 
memoirs giving such vivid traits of life; relating 
with such impartial hand the evil as well as the 
good which appeared in the man, and leaving you 
with such a conviction of the accuracy of the author, 
and of the genuineness of the character portrayed. 
In the lives of Moses and Aaron, of Abraham, Isaac, 
and Jacob, of David and Solomon, though these were 
heroes and great men, founders and rulers, there is 
no attempt in the Bible narrative to deify them, or 
to conceal their faults. The Bible ^'' whitewashes " 
nobody. You see that these were men of force, 
power, sometimes of genius ; but along with their 
great or good deeds the Scripture story gives you 
their weaknesses, foibles, faults, sins, and presents to 
you men, and not impossible or improbable beings. 

7 



98 GOD AND THE FUTUKE LIFE. 

There is nowhere in literature such an admirable 
collection of biographies as we find in the Old Tes- 
tament. 

The poetry of the Bible has instructed and de- 
lighted the most refined and -critical minds in all 
ages, and particularly in modern times when the 
critical faculty has had its greatest development. 
There is scarcely a great poet in the last three cen- 
turies, in our ow^n or other languages, who has not 
taken some Scripture event or some suggestion from 
its pages, as the basis of a poem ; and you need to 
have but a cursory acquaintance with English poetry 
to know that if you could eliminate from it all tliat 
is founded upon or drawn from the Bible, you would 
rob it of very many of its noblest poems, and leave 
a blank which nothing that remains would fill. The 
Psalms, which touch and awaken all the moods and 
experiences of our lives ; the Book of Job, the song 
of Miriam, the song of Deborah, many pages in the 
Prophets, not to speak of other parts, -abound in 
poetry of the highest order, and in narratives w^hich 
touch the heart and stir the feelings by beauty of 
language and elevation of thought, and by their ap- 
peal to the common experience of mankind in mis- 
fortune, disappointment, sorrow, or in great joy and 
gladness. 

The Bible is not a book of science; but any of 



THE BIBLE AS A BOOK. 99 

you who have a taste for natural history will find 
that many of the Bible writers were admirably 
close observers and skilful recorders of natural phe- 
nomena. 

In history no book in all our libraries offers you 
so large and instructive a view of the rise, the 
growth and prosperity, the glory, and then the de- 
cadence and fall of nations, as the Bible. In the 
earlier books of the Old Testament you may see 
how Moses, a man of the greatest genius the world 
has seen, wdth admirable and almost impossible pa- 
tience, gave himself to the making of a nation out 
of a horde of ignorant and degraded f reedmen ; with 
what constant and irritating obstacles he had to con- 
tend in his endeavor to make men out of a people 
who had been sunk in slavery ; and with what won- 
derful wisdom and zeal he persevered in their train- 
ing during forty tedious and vexatious years. If 
you read with sufficient intelligence you will marvel 
to find Moses, in that age of the world, developing 
a system of political economy to w^hich the minds 
of many thoughtful men even now turn back for 
instruction and hope ; and not only this, but to find 
him laying down minute rules for the daily conduct 
of life — rules regarding the administration of justice, 
for cleanliness and order, food, raiment, and drink, 
for the protection of the poor, of prisoners and 



100 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

slaves, for the conduct of men towards men, and to- 
wards women — a mass of sanitary, physiological, and 
social regulations, very many of which we should be 
the better, in our modern society, for re-adopting 
and observing. 

If you have given any thought to statesmanship, 
or have read history with even moderate attention, 
the Bible story of Moses will present him to you as 
by far the wisest and greatest statesman of whom 
we have any record ; as one of the few very great 
men our race has known ; and the greatest of them 
all, because his wisdom and the labors of his long 
life were given unselfishly to the liberation of a 
degraded slave population, and their elevation in 
the scale of manhood and civilization to the rank of 
a nation which remained compact, prosperous, and 
happy so long as it adhered to the laws he estab- 
lished. 

Solon and Lycurgus were famous law-givers among 
the ancients ; but the laws of Moses, in the opinion 
of the ablest thinkers of modern days, far excel 
theirs in scope and merit, and especially in human- 
ity. I^owhere in the histories which have come 
down to us do we find the ruler of an ancient 
people so humane, so careful of the poor, the weak, 
and defenceless ; nowhere are there such simple yet 
admirable devices for the maintenance of a general 



THE BIBLE AS A BOOK. 101 

equality of condition in society. No law-giver or law- 
maker of ancient or modern days has shown so keen 
an appreciation of the importance of the necessity 
of securing to every family of a nation a share in 
its soil, l^^o where do we find such simple and yet 
effective checks placed upon selfishness and that 
greed for accumulation which in our own days has 
forced itself upon the attention of many wise states- 
men and philosophers as a grave danger to society. 
No student of political economy or of statesman- 
ship in our days can neglect to examine with care 
the constitution of that Jewish confederation of 
which Moses laid the corner-stone in the wilderness, 
and which he left Joshua, his principal general or 
military aid, to finally establish according to the 
regulations previously laid down by himseK. 

Nor should you overlook the fact that Joshua, a 
military ruler, who led his people to conquest in a 
time when military rulers were accustomed to misuse 
their power to establish a despotic and personal gov- 
ernment, patriotically respected the constitution of 
the Jewish commonwealth, and, like our own Wash- 
ington, sought only the welfare of his people, and 
not his own aggrandizement — a remarkable and noble 
example of self-denial and public spirit in those days 
which has had few imitators since. 

If you turn to the Book of Proverbs you discover 



102 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

a mass of shrewd and liappy generalizations on hu- 
man life and society, which show the closest obser- 
vation of character. And in all parts of the Bible 
you meet with statements and narratives which, 
were they discovered in other books, or now first 
made by writers of our own day, would be hailed 
as marvels of genius or remarkable insight. 

I would like you to recognize iri the Bible not 
merely a book of moral precepts. It is a great col- 
lection of writings filled with lessons and suggest- 
ions instructive to the student in many of the most 
important branches of modern investigation and in- 
quiry. There is scarcely any subject to which you 
may give thought, barring only the exact sciences, 
in which some part of these ancient writings will 
not be useful and important to you. 



THE MYSTERY OF EAIN. 103 



XL 

THE MYSTERY OF PAIN. 

In the Old Testament the affah-s of the present 
life are the most prominent. In the N^ew Testa- 
ment, and particularly in the Gospels, the concerns 
of this life seem to fade away before our eyes into 
comparative insignificance. 

In the Old Testament prosperity, predominance, 
happiness here below, are held out as the rewards of 
right living and of obedience to God, and the sum- 
mit of felicity is when the aged grandsire sees his 
descendants to the third and fourth generation play- 
ing about his knees ; when his cattle graze on a thou- 
sand hills, and his sons and daughters are powerful 
in the land : " Happy is the man that hath his quiv- 
er full of them ; they shall not be ashamed, but they 
shall speak with the enemies in the gate.'' 

In the 'New Testament these earthly joys and re- 
wards become dim to our vision, which is turned by 
Jesus with gentle persistence toward that other, spir- 
itual and immortal, life of which He never ceased to 
explain, in discourses and parables, the supreme im- 
portance and real relations. 



104 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

It is as tliougli a child or youth, for some time 
drilled in geography, should one day begin the study 
of astronomy. As he considered the heavens, with 
their immensity of infinite space, their numberless 
and unnumbered worlds and systems of worlds, it 
would dawn upon his mind that this planet of ours, 
which had seemed to him hitherto the centre and 
circumference of life, is but an atom of the vast uni- 
verse. IN^ot an insignificant or an unimportant atom 
by any means ; but his wider outlook would show 
him for the first time the true relation of things, 
and that this habitation of ours, wonderful, various, 
and beautiful as it is, is not all. So Jesus "came 
not to destroy, but to fulfil the law." He taught us 
not to despise but only to properly value the earthly 
life. 

In the ISTew Testament we are " as those who seek 
a country," pilgrims — temporary sojourners, that is 
to say — in this life, and looking for another and a 
better ; using this present time to prepare ourselves 
for that higher life in which the promise is of peace ; 
rest, that is to say, from the struggle with bodily 
passions and infirmities, relief from pain, from sor- 
row, from disappointment and injustice, from the 
mean toil involved in supporting the body, and in 
providing for it what it cries out for in various di- 
rections. Eest ; but not in idleness, for that is no 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN. 105 

rest; but in the enjoyments whicli must come, as 
you can see, to a life relieved from sordid necessi- 
ties and more sordid struggles ; from the uncertain- 
ties and sorrows which oppress us because of our 
short sight and inability to comprehend the real pur- 
pose of God and the real bearing and drift of events. 
''For now we see through a glass darkly," Paul 
finely says, " but there face to face," meaning that 
here we see only as one dimly perceives the reflec- 
tion in a mirror of objects which lie behind him — 
but there beyond we shall see with the direct vision 
of our eyes. 

In the Old Testament the state predominates over 
the individual. Moses aimed to establish a nation 
— though with a wisdom before which that of the 
Caesars and Kapoleon is dimmed, and which was far 
beyond his own age of the world, he showed the 
most minute care for the prosperity and happy de- 
velopment of the individual, not less than for the 
mere security of society. To speak in the political 
slang of our day, Moses was furthest from being an 
Imperialist. He founded a truly Democratic Com- 
monwealth ; and you may find the earliest traces of 
what we now call local self-government and decen- 
tralization of power — the opposite of Imperialism — 
in the form of government he elaborated. 

But in the New Testament the individual becomes 



106 GOD AXD THE FUTURE LIFE. 

of the first importance. "Kender unto Caesar the 
things that are Caesar's/' said Jesus ; not as though 
government or society were the supreme object, but 
because these are temporarj^ and subsidiary phenom- 
ena, incidents which we are not to allow to disturb 
our personal lives ; therefore He added, " and to God 
the things that are God's." And He rebuked per- 
sonal ambition and desire for predominance among 
His disciples, saying, " Whosoever of you will be the 
chiefest, shall be the servant to all." 

In the Xew Testament Jesus "brought life and 
immortality to light," and made plain that as this 
life is but a training school, a place of preparation 
for the other, the eternal life, so we are to use it 
not for the accumulation of the things valued by 
the body, which is temporary and perishes ; not to 
gain wealth, or honor, or predominance, or to gratify 
our passions and desires, but to check and curb 
the'se, and to impose on ourselves that course which 
our reason must tell us will best fit us to enjoy a 
life outside of and divested from the body. 

But to do this requires Faith, as Jesus incessantly 
repeated. We must believe that there is a future 
and spiritual life, because we cannot in the scien- 
tific and accurate sense know it ; and we must hold 
this faith as an imperative guide and light of our 
footsteps. 



THE MYSTEKY OF PAIN. 107 

It is not easy, tliis life of preparation, as He said. 
We are fond of permanence ; nothing in tins life 
is so disagreeable to us as to realize its temporary 
nature. We live in tents when we long to live in 
everlasting habitations in this world. To live con- 
tentedly a life of self - denial, an overpowering im- 
pression and belief in the future life is absolutely 
necessary ; for, to make ourselves fit for that spirit- 
ual life, you can easily see, is to hold the good of 
this life cheap, and to remember always that all that 
belongs to the body, all that is meant by success, all 
that we call ambition, the desire to excel, to rule, to 
make ourselves more fortunate, more happy, more 
comfortable than others, has no relation to the future 
life. We are to do our duties: to go whither duty 
to our fellow-men leads us, leaving results to God. 

Hence that deep saying of Jesus to the rich man 
who asked him, " Good master, what shall I do that 
I may inherit eternal life ?" All the Commandments 
he had observed from his youth. " Then Jesus be- 
holding him, loved him, and said unto him, ' One 
thing thou lackest ; go thy way, sell whatever thou 
hast, give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure 
in heaven ; and come take up the cross and follow 
me.' " But the poor rich man " was sad at that say- 
ing and went away grieved, for he had great pos- 
sessions;" and he could not bear to divest himself 



lOS GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

of tlie predominance and the bodily prosperity and 
respect these secured to liim. 

Are we, then, bound to observe a vow of poverty ? 
To live the true life here must we be ascetics? and 
were the old barefooted Dominicans the only candi- 
dates for eternal life ? 

It is not so written : but that we are not to use 
our lives for self-seeking ; that we are not to labor 
for personal success, but for the service of our fel- 
low-men; that we are to accept and use rightly, 
with moderation and self-denial, that return for our 
toil and skill which shall come to us without our 
eager seeking. '* The shoe to whom it fits " is a cyn- 
ical say hi g, by which selfish and unscrupulous men 
have endeavored to justify their seizure of power and 
wealth ; but in the order of society the shoe will 
go to him it fits, without his seeking ; and while you 
may wear it with honor — but not without care and 
anxiety too, if it comes to you — ^you are not to seek 
after it, to scheme for it, to grab it. The cares of 
this world are not to absorb us, or di^aw our atten- 
tion from the view of the other life. 

Surely, if there is another life, this must be the 
true theory of the present. 

Hence, too, that other deep saying of Jesus: 
^'Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled 
about many things ; but one thing is needful, and 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN. 109 

Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be 
taken away from her." 

Now observe, once more, that the conduct im- 
posed on US by Jesus is necessary not merely to fit 
us for the life beyond the body; it is also that 
course by which we may best serve our fellow-men 
and society here. It may not make us, as individ- 
uals, the most successful, the most eminent, the most 
powerful. It may lead the man through many sor- 
rows and disappointments. It is certain to impose 
on him irksome restraints. But, however humble 
or however exalted he may be, living this Christian 
life will put him in harmony with those laws on 
which society is founded, and will make his life 
beneficent to others. 

Thus Jesus gives us, in His teachings and in His 
life— in that theory of life which He urged upon 
mankind — the needed key to the mystery of our 
creation. He solves for us this secret. Given the 
continued existence of the individual human soul 
beyond the body and beyond the grave, and all 
mysteries are made clear, and all creation becomes 
harmonious, which otherwise was but ^' sweet bells 
jangled." On the one hand we see a justification 
for those social laws which impose restraints on the 
individual for the security and benefit of the aggre- 
gate — laws which otherwise have no permanence or 



110 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

sound base, but are exposed to constant attack from 
individual or combined selfishness or desire. On the 
other, we may perceive the Divine purpose, the lov- 
ing wisdom of a loving Father in the least toward 
accidents of our individual lives, and see that to 
have an intelligent purpose which, leaving out the 
future life, would become but the strangest of con- 
fusions in a world otherwise, and, but for our own 
living in it, in every particular singularly reasonable, 
lawful, and harmonious. 

For, if you will consider the Creation, you will 
find there is but one disturbing element in it — Man. 
He alone, by his will, modifies the course of nat- 
ure. He alone, of created things, is capable of dis- 
turbing — even though but to a limited degree — the 
order of nature. His voice alone breaks the great 
silence. 

Mill, in one of the saddest books ever written by 
a great philosopher — his ''Three Essays on Relig- 
ion" — sets down in that lucid style of which he was 
master the grievances of our bodily lives, and rea- 
sons that God cannot be a being of infinite good- 
ness, and at the same time of infinite power, else 
he would not have permitted pain and grief, which 
make up, as Mill felt, and as all men and women 
are forced to feel, so great a part of our lives. 
There must have been two Gods — one a good, the 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN. Ill 

other an evil spirit, with co-equal powers, he thinks, 
to account for these phenomena. 

Undoubtedly, if there is no future life. Mill was 
right, and there are either two Gods or none. It is 
a reasonable conclusion; and Mill's argument only 
shows how incoherent and absurd a phenomenon, in 
an otherwise well-regulated universe, is the life of 
man, on any other theory than that which continues 
his life beyond the grave. 

We do not comprehend the ways of God — but how 
should we ? We cannot see with His eyes ; we are 
incapable of appreciating even very many of the mi- 
nor phenomena of the life about us ; and the mere 
thought of eternity, of time without end, of space 
without bounds, and of wisdom without limit, which 
must be His who sees the end from the beginning — 
the mere thought of these things eludes the grasp of 
our minds, and we cannot make them ours. 

Is this strange or unreasonable ? Have I not, in 
like manner, seen some of you, when you were small 
children, sitting in a corner gloomily reasoning with 
yourselves over the strange and incomprehensible 
perversity, the needless and despotic cruelty, the 
unreasonable hatefulness of your parents in deny- 
ing you some pleasure, or punishing you with what 
seemed to you cruel severity for some misconduct? 
Have I not seen your eyes flash, and 'known that 



112 GOD AND THE FUTUEE LIFE. 

your little hearts burned with fierce indignation, at 
what you believed to be irritating oppression, by your 
parents, of your smaller brothers and sisters ? Your 
slightly developed intelligence could not be made to 
appreciate the reasons which moved your parents, 
nor the good they sought to bring to you when they 
imposed self-denial or insisted on obedience. But as 
you emerged into the broader experience and larger 
life of grown youth you saw and acknowledged, 
often with wonder, and always with gratitude, the 
wisdom, the prudent foresight, the loving care of 
your dear mother ; and no quality of hers now, when 
you see things "face to face," so wins your love and 
grateful devotion as the memory of the wise, firm 
hand which, always in love, but often in sorrow and 
suffering to herself, insisted, restrained, forbade, de- 
nied, or punished. How often has she felt in her 
innermost heart, as she dealt with you, the force of 
that plaintive cry of Jesus, " Oh ye of little faith !" 

'Nov does any wise mother fail to learn_^ out of her 
experience with little children, how vain are all her 
laws and her loving care, to give them the true de- 
velopment of men and women. After all her ad- 
monitions she sees that experience is their needed 
teacher, and that when it has once burned its fingers 
that does more to keep a child away from the fire 
than the most persistent care and commands of the 



THE MYSTERY OF PAIN. 113 

nurse. The boy who is obliged to make his own 
sled may not have as pretty a sled as his fellow, but 
he is, as we say, " more of a boy " — he is an abler 
boy than the other who went to the shop and bought 
one with his father's money. He is an abler boy 
than he would have been had his father, the car- 
penter, made the sled for him. 

Pain, grief, toil, disappointment of our wishes and 
hopes in childhood, you plainly see, were necessary 
to your manly and womanly development and fit- 
ness for a broader life. The boy who is "coddled" 
by his parents becomes what you call a " Miss Kan- 
cy," and grows into a selfish, cowardly, and useless 
man. N"ow, if we are to have a still higher and 
broader life beyond the grave, is it not reasonable to 
believe that all we suffer here may be and should be 
in like manner but a means toward our development 
for this higher life ? Do not pain, and grief, and 
disai3pointed hopes become to our minds reasonable 
parts of an education for that life — and very impor- 
tant parts ? May we not hold that these phenomena 
do not disturb but rather are needed to complete the 
general harmony ? 

If this life were all that remains for us, then, in- 
deed, we might justly complain. But, in that case, 
complaint would be so futile and useless that we 
should cease to reason ; for you must see that, leav- 

8 



114 GOD AND THE FUTUKE LIFE. 

ing out the consideration of a future life, there can 
be no philosophy so sterile as that of Mill, specula- 
ting about two Gods of coequal powers and opposite 
wills. If this life is all for us, what matter whether 
there are two or two thousand Gods? We cannot 
scale Olympus — ^let us '^ eat, drink, and be merry, for 
to-morrow we die" — or, to put the same thought in 
modern commercial language, " every man for him- 
self, and the devil take the hindmost." 



THE LIMIT OF AUTHORITY. 115 



XII. 

THE LIMIT OF AUTHORITY. 

When you read a book two questions arise in 
your mind concerning tlie statements it contains : 
First, are they true ? Second, who makes them ? 

If it is a book of science you are reading, and the 
statements concern the inquiry into natural phenom- 
ena, you may do wisely to look first to the author's 
name and reputation. If, for instance, you were 
reading a treatise on the higher mathematics, or per- 
haps one on the intricate mechanics of stair-build- 
ing, you would do well to trouble yourself only with 
an author of the highest repute, because that would 
be your guarantee against deception or false infor- 
mation. To the student of the exact sciences the 
report of experts alone is valuable; and if I, who 
am not an astronomer, wish to know what is known 
in that science, I prefer to consult some acknowl- 
edged authority who will tell me what is certainly 
ascertained, so far as I can comprehend it, and who 
will not, at any rate, mix up his own or other peo- 
ple's opinions or speculations with the established 
facts of the science. 



116 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

But, on the side of morals, it is very possible to 
overstate the importance of authority. In morals 
there are no laymen. Each one of ns has a right 
to be an inquirer. You need not say, " Such is the 
truth," in a question of morals, "because so John 
Wesley, or Jonathan Edwards, or the Pope, or Brig- 
ham Young, or Confucius, or Mahomet proclaimed 
or affirmed it." In morals you are dealing with 
your own conduct, and your own soul or spiritual 
part ; and you cannot take shelter behind some one 
else, because it is your own conduct, founded on 
your own convictions or faith, which alone can form 
your character — which is your soul. 

In the teachings of Jesus you find instruction, 
and in His life the model for your own life; and 
these are all-sufficient. You may accept them as 
final, and upon them build your own faith and life. 
In the Gospels they are placed before us in a man- 
ner intelligible to the least educated, the most hum- 
ble or savage, as the sufficient guide for our conduct 
here, and our training through that conduct, for the 
future life. Millions have, fortunately, taken these, 
without further inquiry, as the absolute and final 
truth in morals, the sufficient guide for their lives. 

You may do the same. But, also, you may in- 
quire, even in this case. If you have doubts, as so 
many have in these days, you are bound to inquire ; 



THE LIMIT OF AUTHORITY. 117 

for you may confidently say, "If there is a God, and 
if He has given ns the needed instructions for that 
course in this life which shall lead us safely to the 
higher life, He cannot be offended if I use the fac- 
ulties He gave me to inquire into this truth." 

You may go further, and say, "To insist upon 
mere authority in this case may weaken the weight 
of the trath itself; for if it is true, it is so not 
merely because it there stands written, but further, 
because it must stand in harmony with the works 
of God in the creation so far as I can comprehend 
these." 

Thus, to assert that the Golden Rule is the true 
rule of living hecause Jesus delivered it may not 
be conclusive upon some minds. But if you show 
that, also, it is the true rule ; that according to 
which men and society here can most beneficently 
act upon each other, and which, by its practice, will 
actually best fit a soul for life beyond the grave, 
then you produce conviction upon a reasoning but 
doubting being. 

You may safely accept as final, then, and without 
further inquiry, if you like, the words and the life 
of Jesus; but also you may reason and inquire, as 
we have been doing in all that goes before in this 
book. Such inquiry vdll show you that the Golden 
Rule is the true rule of life and action, because it 



118 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

applies perfectly to every phase and condition of 
life and society — a fact wliich is established by the 
general experience of mankind, the life of Jesus 
being itself the most conspicuous and instructive 
application and example we know of. 

You will read, perhaps, in current literature about 
what are called "other Bibles" — the sacred books 
of other nations, as those of the Chinese, Hindoos, 
and Mohammedans. It is a fashion, just now, to 
magnify these writings ; to place them on an equal- 
ity with the Bible, and even to call some of them 
superior to it. You need not trouble your minds 
with these trivialities. Whatever is good, just, and 
wise must, in the nature of things, be so, without 
regard to authority. For us Jesus was the author 
of those final sayings which make plain to us the 
mystery and the purpose of our lives. He not only 
taught, but lived; and His life and His words make 
our complete and sufficient guide. If, anywhere 
else, good has been taught and lived — amen ; let us 
be glad. It would be strange, indeed, if nowhere 
else except in Europe, and later in America, man- 
kind had been able to get true views of life. You 
will notice that no one pretends to have discovered 
in those "other Bibles" any higher or more forci- 
ble teaching of these all-important truths than we 
possess. If we have the sum and substance of all, 



THE LIMIT OF AUTHOKITY. 119 

that is enough for us. There can be no parties in 
morals. 

If, indeed, anywhere, some one should discover a 
new law of life, higher and better than that left us 
by Jesus, that would be a matter of supreme interest 
and infinite importance to all of us. Thus, to a 
pious Chinese who had accepted, as final, the saying 
of Confucius : " Recompense evil with justice, and 
recompense kindness with kindness," the Golden 
Rule and the whole tenor of the life and teachings 
of Jesus might come with a quite startling effect, 
as a new revelation of a much higher life than 
that which, until then, he had accepted as the best 
truth. For there is a very wide difference between 
doing justice to your enemy and loving him as 
yourself. 

A new code of morals, a new rule of life, leading 
us to higher things, both in this life and the next, 
than the Golden Rule — this would certainly demand 
all our attention. But this you see now^here pre- 
tended to. 

Jesus "brought life and immortality to light." 
His message connected this life with the other, and 
thus established for us the real proportions of this 
life, and gave us the true perspective. If this life is 
all we have to live, it becomes the most important 
phenomenon with which we have to deal ; and each 



120 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

of US has the right to use it as seems to him, on the 
whole, best for his personal gratification. In that 
case to talk to us about self-restraint for the benefit 
of others is rank folly, and very many, indeed, in 
our logical days so regard it. But if this life is but 
an insignificant fraction of the sum of our existence, 
that changes the whole problem. It was this which, 
as you will find in the Gospels, Jesus so constantly 
and strenuously insisted on. The more closely you 
study His life and His words, the more clearly you 
will see that both were based on the theory that our 
souls are immortal. "My kingdom is not of this 
world," He said. The future life is the foundation 
and justification of all He urged concerning our 
conduct of this life. 

The burden of His message to mankind is, that 
wrong-doing injures the perpetrator infinitely more 
than the sufferer, because it debases his spiritual nat- 
ure, though it may advance his merely worldly pros- 
perity ; that we are not to strive after the " things 
of this world," fame, honor, riches, or even comfort, 
because, as they are difficult of attainment, so they 
are apt to absorb our attention exclusively, and thus 
draw it away from the eternal things which, if they 
are real, as He taught, are of course of far greater 
moment ; that self-sacrifice in the cause of duty, and 
for the welfare and benefit of others, is the true 



THE LIMIT OF AUTHORITY. 121 

service of God and the true life for ourselves, be- 
cause in this way only can we build up our charac- 
ters, and train and perfect our spiritual parts. He 
taught that we are watchfully to curb and keep un- 
der control the body, with its passions and desires 
which come to us with our merely animal parts ; and 
to regard as the all-important element in ourselves 
that nobler and permanent part which is destined to 
a life beyond the grave, and which we call the soul. 
He was not an ascetic, and He nowhere advises or 
suggests that we shall make ourselves unhappy or 
uncomfortable for the mere sake of unhappiness or 
sterile self-denial. It is not hatred of the sunlight 
He teaches, but sharing it with our fellows. But 
He urges constantly, and reasonably if there is for 
us a future life, that the true life here consists, not 
in satisfaction, but in restraint ; not i'n gratification, 
but in self-denial for the happiness of others ; not in 
the selfish pursuit of our own objects, but in devo- 
tion to our neighbors — our fellow-men. 

What I wish you clearly to apprehend is, that this 
is all utterly reasonable, practical, and clearly wise, 
supposing there is for us a future life. Moreover, 
it is all in strict harmony with whatever we know 
of the constitution of the universe, of human nat- 
ure, and human society. If we are capable of con- 
tinued existence outside of our bodies and bej^ond 



122 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

the grave, tlien undoubtedly we cannot do better 
tlian to j)ursue such a course of conduct here as will 
maintain a spiritual life apart from or independent 
of the body which perishes; and to regard, as of 
minou consequence, those things which, clearly, we 
cannot take with us into another life. Hence Jesus 
reasonably insisted on subordination of the body to 
the spirit ; on the sacrifice of ease, pleasure, bodily 
comfort, ambition, power, wealth, and of all merely 
bodily pleasures and gratifications, to the dictates of 
duty; and for this life so pursued He held out the 
reward of an immortal life beyond the grave, a life 
to be lived without the burdens and disabilities of 
the body, and therefore, of course, a broader, freer, 
less oppressed, and more enjoyable life, in every 
sense except the merely animal. 

It is a great rewaixl, as I hope you will see, and 
one eminently worth all the effort required to se- 
cure it. 

The sailor labors patiently for months and years 
in the most toilsome, anxious, and hazardous of pro- 
fessions, looking cheerfully forward to the reward 
of a few days of leisure, freedom, and enjoyment on 
shore after the close of his voyage. But to us all 
is held out the prospect, after "life's fitful fever," 
not of a brief period, but of an eternity of liberty, 
in a boundless immensity of space filled with the 



THE LIMIT OF AUTHORITY. 123 

wonderful works of God, for us to view and inves- 
tigate with faculties enlarged and freed from our 
present bonds. 

As the theory of existence tlius propounded by 
Jesus is everywhere absolutely reasonable, and not 
inconsistent with what we know here of life, so in 
the like spirit He everywhere insists that God is 
our Father. Not our king, our despot, our tyrant, 
our unreasonable commander, but " Our Father which 
is in Heaven." 

Jesus does not present us God as a being who, 
having brought us into existence, thereupon turned 
his back upon us, and left us as foundhngs on a 
strange door-step ; but as a Father who cares for us, 
watches over us, to whom we may confidently ap- 
peal in our needs. He does not " coddle " us, or do 
for us that which we should do for ourselves ; even 
a wise earthly fatlier knows that his children need 
to be strengthened and developed by hardships and 
sufferings, and will be the better and stronger men 
and women if, in their youth, they have been forced, 
even at the cost of many disagreeables, to be self- 
dependent. 

God is our Father — so Jesus taught ; and as in 
your childhood your parents, if they were wise, 
valued the right direction of your efforts more than 
mere success in achievement, so, doubtless, our Fa- 



124 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

ther in Heaven regards us poor children of a larger 
growth with a judgment different from that of men. 
We are to do what is right and leave the result to 
God. 

You will see, I hope, that the social theory of 
Jesus is thus perfect at all points. It fits every 
phase of life. Its general observance would form, 
without further effort or regulations, a true and per- 
fect society or nation. But it has reference mainly 
and primarily, as I have also tried to show you, to 
the individual. It is the individual spirit that is to 
be formed and trained for the future life ; and there 
are no circumstances, no social surroundings so un- 
toward that this preparation of the individual may 
not go on. It is the individual soul, living solitary 
in its strange bodily casement, which appeals to its 
Father in Heaven for help, for strength, for conso- 
lation. 

Hence, in this life which He prescribed, and there 

only, men find serenity of soul, fortitude to meet 

the mishaps and failures of life : because they leave 

. the end to God, in the belief that, while it is theirs 

to do their duty^ the result lies with Him. 

That is what Jesus meant by faith. He nowhere 
pretends that the future life is susceptible of dem- 
onstration. Everywhere he insists on faith, and re- 
peats again and again, with unceasing iteration, that 



THE LIMIT OF AUTHORITY. 125 

without faith there is no possibility of a true life. 
There may be those, fortunate, prosperous, powerful, 
whose efforts seem sufBcient to themselves, and who 
do not need this dependence on God as a Father. 
But ask the poor, the wretched, the neglected or suf- 
fering, the unfortunate, the disappointed, the weary. 
And who is not, at some time, among these ? 



126 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 



XIIL 

MIRACLES. 

That Jesus was a very extraordinary character is 
admitted even by intelligent men who choose to re- 
ject the authority of His teaching and His theory 
of life. That the Gospel narratives, which preserve 
for ns the only account we have of His life, char- 
acter, and ministrations are very remarkable literary 
productions, is freely granted by the ablest critics 
who examine them from the merely literary and 
historical stand-point. 

Independently, therefore, of their supreme impor- 
tance and authority as the guide to correct living, 
these Gospels deserve your attention, your careful 
and intelligent study, as the biographical records of 
the most extraordinary personage of whom history 
makes mention. If it is a necessary part of intel- 
lectual training to familiarize ourselves with the 
lives of those who have greatly affected the course 
of events or the development of mankind, you cer- 
tainly cannot afford, as an intelligent being, to give 
an inattentive or perfunctory study to the biography 



MIRACLES. 127 

of one who, born among a rude, bigoted, and subject 
people, of the humblest parentage, associating all 
his life with the illiterate and poor — the common 
people ; taking not the least part in the government, 
either sacerdotal or political, of His nation ; having 
no party in the state or in the church ; neither seek- 
ing nor making friends . or supporters among the 
powerful or wealthy ; and put to death on a criminal 
charge long before He had reached middle life, yet 
by His life. His doctrines, and His death more pro- 
foundly and permanently affected human thought 
and human society than all the conquerors and phi- 
losophers who ever lived. 

You will find the Gospel records remarkable for 
a moderation, decorum, and simplicity of style which 
have justly won the admiration of the most eminent 
critics. The Gospel narrative, regarded as mere " lit- 
erature," is, by the consent of the ablest students of 
many centuries, a very notable and extraordinary 
production. The virriters record the wisest and deep- 
est sayings of Jesus without comment ; they tell of 
surprising miracles without boasting or pretence; 
they relate for us what Jesus said and did, in the 
simplest language, without art or apparent skill, of- 
tenest as men who did not themselves comprehend 
the full meaning and significance of their report. 

What they omit to tell us adds much to the lit- 



128 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

erary merit, and very greatly to the cliaracter and 
credibility, of tlieir repoi-t. 

Of the early life of Jesus, for instance, they have 
very little to say. Minute details of His life as a 
child and as a youth would be of the deepest inter- 
est to us ; they would gratify a curiosity which all 
feel who have considered His life at all. But they 
would be of no real value to us ; they could not help 
to impress upon our minds the supreme importance 
of His message, or of His theory of life and society. 
The Gospel writers tell us therefore only that He 
was born in obscure and huml)le life, that He was 
in childhood taken inta Egypt for safety ; that in 
early youth He sat in the Temple and, listening to 
the disputes of the learned doctors, puzzled them by 
His uncommon intelligence and clearness of spiritual 
insight; that He was subject to His parents; that 
the incidents of His early life were treasured in His 
poor mother's heart — and that is all, until He went 
to be baptized by John, was later alone in the wil- 
derness, and thereafter, a man grown and, as it is 
supposed, thirty years of age, began at once His 
brief period of public ministration. 

It is impossible to doubt that the Gospel writers 
thought Jesus a very extraordinary personage. Sure- 
ly it is the more remarkable that they are so reticent 
concerning the details of His early life. They had 



MIRACLES. 129 

not known Jcsns in Ilis cliildliood, and their plan 
and aim appear to have been to reLate in detail only 
or mainly that of which they were eye-witnesses. 
To the critical reader this self-restraint marks their 
narrative as accurate and credible; to all it makes 
the more impressive the story of His public life. 

It is the most dee]3ly touching story in all history. 
But it is nowhere overwrought ; the reporters never 
transcend the boimds of the most rigid decorum; 
they make no attempt to impress themselves upoii 
us. Everywhere, too, the life and the doctrine are 
harmonious — even where we see plainly that the life 
was a stumbling-block, and the message a mystery to 
those who followed Him with wondering eyes and 
differing hopes and expectations. For you cannot 
read attentively the Gospel narrative without seeing 
that the disciples and followers of Jesus w^ere of ten- 
est blind to His real aims and purposes, and incapa- 
ble, at the time, of taking in the spirit of the mes- 
sage they heard. How wonderful, therefore, that, 
failing to comprehend Him, as they did, they should 
yet have left us so clear a report of Him ! 

There were not wanting, somewhat later, writers 
ready enough to gratify the pious curiosity and the 
love of the marvellous of people w^ho, hearing of 
Jesus through the Gospels, and ignorantly fasci- 
nated not by the spirit of His message, which they 

9 



130 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

but dimly apprehended, but by the wonder of His 
miraculous works, burned to hear more. There is 
a curious body of literature, known as the Apocry- 
phal Gospels, in which you may read minute details 
of the childhood and youth of Jesus ; and nothing, 
perhaps, more strikingly sets out the marvellous re- 
straint, or makes clearer the simple and wonderful 
truthfulness of the Gospel narratives, than the read- 
ing of these apocryphal and invented tales. There 
Jesus figures as a mere wonder-worker from His 
earliest childhood. Miracles crowd in, to the shut- 
ting out completely of the real meaning and pur- 
pose of His life. 

It is instructive to compare these miracles with 
those recorded in the Gospels. You will see that 
in these apocryphal narratives they are mere foolish 
magic, where they are not contrary to the whole char- 
acter of Jesus. A leprous girl is cured by drinking 
the water in which the infant Jesus had been washed. 
A young man whom sorcerers had turned into a mule 
is restored by placing the infant Jesus on his back. 
Mary needing to wash the child's coat. He causes a 
well of water to spring out of the ground near a syc- 
amore-tree. The boy Jesus plays with other boys ; 
they make clay figures of animals, and Jesus causes 
these figures to walk, fly, eat, and drink. Joseph be- 
ing an unskilful carpenter, Jesus helps him out by 



MIRACLES. 131 

miraculously widening the gates and giving proper 
sliape to tlie buckets, sieves, and boxes Joseph makes. 
The boy Jesus amuses himself by making fish-pools, 
and strikes dead, by His will, another boy who had 
broken the pools and let the water run out. He dis- 
obeys His school - master, and when the master is 
about to whip Him Jesus causes his hand to wither. 
He causes a boy to die who carelessly runs against 
Him in the street, and curses with blindness those 
who complain of Him. 

You see how trivial are these mere "wonders," 
and, above all, how false and repugnant to the char- 
acter of Jesus, as it is developed in the Gospels. 
You notice, also, the contrast between these stories 
of magic and the miracles related by the Evangelists. 

Still, there are miracles recorded in the Gospels, 
you say. 

So there are. Let us consider them : 

In the first place, you will notice that these mira- 
cles had never for their object the mere exhibition 
of remarkable or supernatural powers to astonish or 
terrify the beholders. They had not for their ob- 
ject either the gratification of any passion, in Jesus, 
of anger, or revenge, or ambition. 

Further, no one thought so little of these miracles 
as Jesus himself. He did them as one to w^liom the 
power was natural, and no more surprising than the 



132 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

capability of a Frencliman to speak French. Often- 
est He commanded the subject of a miraciilons cure 
to " tell no man/' but go to the Temple, give thanks 
for relief, and make the prescribed offerings. When 
the Pharisees asked him to perform some wonder 
he refused, saying, "An evil and adulterous gener- 
ation seeketh after a sign." When the nobleman 
whose son was sick at Capernaum came and besought 
Him to come down and heal the lad who lay at the 
point of death, Jesus at first refused, saying, " Ex- 
cept ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe ;" 
but when further entreated, and seeing that here 
was no vulgar wonder-seeker, he dismissed the man, 
saying, " Go thy way, thy son liveth ;" " and the 
man believed the word that Jesus had spoken to 
him, and went his way," because he was not as the 
Pharisees, a mere seeker after signs and wonders. 

Of miracles done for the mere sake of exciting 
surprise or striking terror into beholders there is 
not a trace in the Gospels. He " went about doing 
good," as one to whom the desire and the power 
were equally natural and proper. But it is remark- 
able, and singularly in harmony with His teachings 
of the subordination of this life to the next, that He 
made so extremely moderate a use of this power. 
Were there no future life, but were this life all we 
have to live, and therefore its comforts and satis- 



MIRACLES. 133 

factions of the extremest and final importance to 
us, in that case Jesus, possessed of such powers, and 
of so merciful and pitying a spirit, should have re- 
lieved not one, but all the lame, blind, and suffering. 

Still, you repeat, it is reported that He did mira- 
cles. How can we, trained in scientific methods, 
believe in a miracle ? 

Well, then, what is a miracle? It is an occur- 
rence out of the ordinary course of nature, so far 
as we have ascertained this ordinary course. It is 
contrary to what we call natural laws. Now, before 
we declare a phenomenon absolutely contrary to 
natural laws we ought to be sure that we know all 
the laws of nature. How can we say this — we who 
have, with all our science, made but the faintest im- 
pression upon the sum of knowledge ; and who see 
at every advance which science makes, not less, but 
more remaining unknown to us ? Many things which 
are now common facts of our daily lives w^ould have 
seemed "miraculous" a few centuries ago. The 
poor Marquis of Worcester, it is said, was put into 
a mad -house because he foretold, even dimly, the 
possibility of railroads and steamships. 

And do not forget that we have explained noth- 
ing when we speak of "natural laws." We have 
only classified a phenomenon when we have referred 
it to its "natural laws." We call it a natural law 



134 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

that water seeks its level ; that the magnet attracts 
iron and steel. We define electricity to be a "sub- 
tile fluid," and have gone some way in discovering 
its methods of action, which we call its laws. But 
we really know nothing of these and other mys- 
teries, except the mere mechanics of their appear- 
ance. We know not how or why the magnet at- 
tracts iron, or why the needle points toward the 
north. Rightly, and not superficially regarded, the 
mystery of nature is not less but only much more 
a mystery, the more closely we observe and the 
more deeply we penetrate what we call the laws 
according to which physical phenomena occur. 

" Thou wilt have no mystery or mysticism," says 
Carlyle, " wilt walk through thy world by the rush- 
light of what thou callest truth, and even by the 
hand-lamp of what I call Attorney logic, and ' ex- 
plain ' all and ' account for ' all, or believe nothing 
of it. Doth not thy cow calve? Doth not' thy 
bull gender ? Thou thyself, wert not thou born ? 
wilt thou not die ? Explain me all this." 

Jesus "did many wonders and miracles," and He 
made as little of them as God does of the daily 
miracle of a man's life, or of the constantly recur- 
ring miracle of the sun's rising. And He nowhere 
required or suggested that we should think more 
of them. 



MIRACLES. 135 

For what were all liis miracles, or all other won- 
ders, compared with the miracle of His own life 
and teachings ? Surely this is the real miracle, the 
event most wonderful, and least to be accounted for 
— that He, so born, into such a society, at that age 
of the world, should have taught and lived as He 
did. To take that for granted as in the natural 
course, and to wonder at, or object to, or attend to 
only those acts of His life which we call miracles, 
and which He clearly regarded as trivial : surely this 
is only to fling away the greater in order to stum- 
ble over the less. It is to seize the shell and throw 
away the kernel of the nut. 

What you have to do is not to trouble yourself 
about the possibility of miracles — for who can assure 
you that, some day, w^hat we call miraculous deeds 
may not be as common as blackberries ? You have 
to ascertain what bearing, if any, they have upon the 
question of your conduct of life, or upon the ques- 
tion of the value of the theory of life propounded 
by Jesus. You are here, according to that theory, 
to prepare and train your spiritual part for a future 
existence beyond the grave, and without the body. 
Now, what has a miracle in it that it can help you 
toward this supremely important end ? If anything, 
then it is important tliat you should ascertain all 
about it. If not, then it is at least immaterial. If 



136 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

that Avliicli Jesus taught, and which He exempli- 
fied in His life, is evidently untrue, or if it is im- 
probable as being out of harmony with the gen- 
eral creation or plainly unsuited to life — then un- 
doubtedly His miracles do not justify or lend force 
to His doctrines. If His teaching is true, then the 
miracles add nothing to it for us ; though undoubt- 
edly they attracted attention to His doctrine from 
the beholders. 

Jesus restored a blind man to sight, and we call 
that a miracle, and wonder at it. But look about 
you and see if all our lives are not surrounded by 
even greater wonders. You bury a seed — a cherry- 
stone; if it grows at all, surely that is a miracle, 
for you cannot in any way explain it or account 
for it. If it grows into a cherry-tree, is not that 
still more a miracle ? Certainly you do not account 
for it, in any real sense of explaining a phenome- 
non, by saying that it is the result of a natural 
law. That is only a subterfuge. You would call 
it a miracle, perhaps, if the cherry-stone produced 
an oak-tree ; but is it not more wonderful, stranger, 
less easily to be explained, less credible a priori^ 
that a cherry-stone should, with absolute certainty, 
produce a cherry-tree, and never by chance an oak 
or an elm? 

The words and the life of Jesus are, so far as we 



MIRACLES. 137 

can see, final. His theory of human life, of the ca- 
reer, so to speak, open to the human soul, is at one 
with all we know of natural laws, of the phenomena 
of the universe, and of society. Kone of us can im- 
agine a higher or further reaching rule of conduct 
than the command to "love your neighbor as your- 
self," or a clearer and nobler commentarv on this rule 
than the Sermon on the Mount. The old laws of 
the Jews and of the heathen were such that, as has 
often been remarked, really good men and women 
lived above them. They were better than their laws. 
But who of us lives above or beyond this newer law 
of Jesus? The so-called Christian world would be 
changed as by magic to-day if the greater part of it 
even strove to live according to this last " new com- 
mandment." 

Under the old law men were better than the law. 
Under the new dispensation men are not so good as 
this "new commandment," yet they are far better 
than men ever were before. It is, perhaps, strange 
to you, as you survey the Christian w^orld, that it is 
not better; that selfishness is so greatly the rule; 
that men strive and scramble for wealth and honors 
and predominance as they do ; that the Fifth Avenue 
and the Five Points lie so near together, and that 
the earnings of the poor are so small, while the su- 
perfluities of the rich are so boundless. 



138 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

Well, the Christian world is not better, because 
it is not Christian. But all history shows that it 
easily might be very much worse ; and it is not 
worse, only because it has so large a leaven of 
Christianity. 



NATUKE OF THE FUTURE LIFE. 139 



XIV. 

NATURE OF THE FUTURE LIFE. 

Reading the Gospel story of Jesus you find that 
while He insisted constantly on the fact of a future 
life beyond the grave, on its intimate connection 
with this life, and on the supreme importance of 
that relation, and made this the great and overshad- 
owing element of His teaching, the basis of His 
theory of the present life, yet he nowhere revealed 
to us in detail the features of that future state of 
existence. He said very little about them, and that 
only incidentally. To a sophistical query put to 
Him by certain Sadducees He replied that "In 
Heaven there is neither marrying nor giving in 
marriage." To the penitent thief on the cross He 
promised, "This night shalt thou be with me in 
Paradise !" Only everywhere He insists on the 
fatherly superintendence of God over our lives, if 
we are willing to submit to such care. 

From His oft-repeated instructions and admoni- 
tions concerning the conduct of the present life, 
however, we may by inference gather at least some 



140 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

leading traits of the other ; just as, if an experienced 
traveller should advise you as to your necessary and 
judicious preparations for a journey in a distant, and 
to you unknown country, you would be able, from 
his counsel, to arrive at some general conclusions as 
to the characteristics of the country you proposed to 
visit. 

Thus, when we find Jesus on all occasions making 
light of bodily gratifications and pleasures, and re- 
garding as of no real value, but rather as serious 
hinderances, the possession of wealth, honor, personal 
predominance, luxury, bodily ease, and the desire or 
ambition for these, we may reasonably conclude that 
such things have no place in the future life. 

Beyond this, it seems probable that the conditions 
of that life are inconceivable by us in our present 
state, because, with our limited bodily senses, it is 
impossible for us to imagine anything fundament- 
ally different from those objects or outside of those 
laws which surround us on this planet, and for the 
apprehension of which our physical senses are fitted. 
"We cannot conceive of a new color not contained 
in the spectrum of our sun ; though it would be 
very rash in us to assert that some other of the 
myriads of suns in the infinite universe does not 
give out to its planets a color unknown to us, or 
that the organs of vision of some animals do not 



NATUKE OF THE FUTUKE LIFE. 141 

reveal to tliem colors which the human eye and 
brain cannot discern. Our minds cannot conceive 
of an animal constructed on a plan essentially dif- 
ferent from that used by the Creator on our earth ; 
and this plan is now known to students to be sim- 
ple, and resting on one or a very few general ideas. 
We know there are sounds inaudible to our ears. 
It is believed by some physicists to be demonstrable 
that our planetary system did not arrange itself by 
virtue solely of laws now in action, but that if we 
could trace back its history to an early period we 
should come to a time when some other and differ- 
ent laws were in action. But our reason cannot 
grasp the nature of such laws. We are unable to 
conceive, for instance, of a law which could have 
occupied the place of the law of gravitation, but 
should have acted in a different way. 

We may, however, take hold of the problem from 
another side. Let us suppose that we are to find 
prevailing in the future life the same general laws 
which obtain here around us. Though not certain, 
this is at least supposable — and we know of none 
other. Consider, then, that all our necessities and 
sufferings, as well as our blessings and joys in this 
present life, are of two kinds. They are physical, 
and moral or spiritual. 

The first come from, and relate to, the body. 



l-i2 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

They form a very large and important class; and 
of these, yon will observe, we mnst be entirely rid 
whenever we lay down onr bodies. Hunger, thirst, 
disease, pain, and all the wants, natural and artificial, 
which are bred of a desire to gratify the body and 
the passions which pertain to the body — all these 
can have, we must believe, no place in a region 
where the spirit or soul is divested of the encum- 
brance of this body. 

It is useful for you to consider for a little how 
wide is the area of those wants which pertain to, 
or arise from, the body ; and what, and how much, 
therefore, must disappear of that which concerns and 
engrosses our present lives, if we are to live here- 
after divested of mere bodily necessities and desires. 
It is sometimes objected to the Christian idea of 
Heaven, as a place of universal enjoyment, and of 
security from ills and accidents, that it is impracti- 
cable, and a mere dream. " The fundamental condi- 
tion of happiness is inequality of condition," said an 
eminent statesman to me ; " we cannot all be equal- 
ly happy, because happiness consists in superiority 
over others. If I am to dine I must have a cook 
and other servants. I am happy because my wants 
are supplied ; but every want of mine requires, for 
its gratification, the labor of some subsidiary person, 
some one less happily placed than I. It is the ful- 



NATURE OF THE FUTURE LIFE. 143 

filling of our wants wliicli makes us liappy. If we 
have no desires to be gratified we are simple sav- 
ages. To real happiness, in any condition, there- 
fore, there must be ruler and ruled ; there must be 
greater and less; there must be service, and the 
servant cannot be equally happy with him he serves. 
Happiness and enjoyment arise entirely out of dif- 
ference of condition; a man is happy or fortunate 
because others are less happy or fortunate. Equal- 
ity of conditions would banish enjoyment. If all 
are equally good, or comfortable, or at ease, or pow- 
erful alike, then the essential element of happiness 
and enjoyment is lacking. Hence," concluded he, 
" 1 do not make much account of what the clergy 
tell us of Heaven. J^one of them have been there ; 
it is all a muddle, and a sensible man had better 
think little of it, and attend to his affairs." 

I hope you will see that this is a merely selfish 
and even brutal view. For what is it, in this ar- 
gument, that is spoken of as "happiness?" Eank, 
wealth, predominance, are things undoubtedly help- 
ful to a certain measure and kind of enjoyment 
here; they are important, but on animal grounds 
solely. They are desired, and greedily sought, be- 
cause their possession flatters our ignoble vanity; 
or because thej^ are expected to insure bodily com- 
fort and freedom from care and from the meaner 



144 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

anxieties, most of wliicli we bring on ourselves by 
pampering our bodies ; or because by their help men 
hope to advance their families, or because they are 
thought to give access to pleasanter society; or be- 
cause they enable their possessor to exercise power 
over others, which, after all, he has not the wisdom 
to use rightly. 

Now, observe that all these things, important as 
they may seem, have relation solely to our present 
condition, in which the body, with its constant calls, 
plays so great a part, and in which w^e have evil 
w^ills and passions to gratify. Leave off the body, 
with all it implies of food, sleep, shelter, rest, amuse- 
ment, luxury, power, and turn the intelligence or 
spiritual part away from transitory and vain or 
mean ambitions to true, because lasting — everlasting 
objects ; and all these coveted and engrossing mat- 
ters, the possession of which, after all, is sure to 
embarrass and mar even our present lives, but which 
produce and necessitate inequality of conditions and 
of enjoyment, not merely cease to be important; 
they cease to be considered at all. They drop out. 

"Why, for instance, should I desire wealth, if I 
have no bodily necessities and animal passions to 
gratify; if I no longer feel the need of houses, 
lands, carriages, servants, society with its cumbrous 
and costly arrangements? Or why, to go a long 



NATURE OF THE FUTURE LIFE. 145 

step higher, should I covet power or predominance, 
if I see, face to face, the eternal fitness and har- 
mony, and am patient, as God is patient, because 
I know that eternity gives time to solve all prob- 
lems ? 

But, you may say, there are joys and sorrows 
which pertain not to the body ; or, at least, not to 
that alone. There are passions, as that of ambition, 
which trouble the mind or spirit, and move the 
body only through that. 

Let us consider this for a moment. You will find 
that all the evil passions require for their gratifica- 
tion the use of the body. Granted, now, what you 
have argued : that the intelligence or soul is wedded 
to such passions; suppose it, then, divested of the 
body on which it depends for ability to gratify these 
desires or propensities, but still filled with them ; 
still longing for their gratification. Take the case 
of a man absorbed, as the first ISTapoleon was, by an 
intense passion to rule and control, but left, in the 
other life, with absolutely no means of acquiring 
power over the least of his fellows ; able to appeal 
neither to their fears nor to their necessities nor to 
their passions ; powerless, therefore, and the prey of 
the bitterest pangs. Or take the case of any other 
selfish and evil passion which has become fastened on 
the intelligence or soul, and rules and engrosses it, 

10 



146 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

gnawing for satisfaction, but totally unable, for lack 
of the body, to obtain this satisfaction. 

It is not only easily conceivable, it is a reasonable 
and necessary supposition, that the passions and de- 
sires to Avhich we here give ourselves over we shall 
carry with us into the future life. It would be 
contrary to reason to suppose that the character, the 
complexion of the vital part of man, is greatly or 
at all changed by passing out of the body. It has 
changed its condition, its locality ; it no longer lives 
in the body which it has inhabited and nourished, 
and used as a means, and which, on its departure, 
rots and goes to enrich the soil. But it is no more 
supposable that this change of condition and habi- 
tation alters the character, or eliminates the desires, 
aspirations, or passions of the man, to which he has 
made himself subject here, than you would argue 
that one would change his nature by removing from 
Europe to America, or from one street to another. 

Now, there is no deeper or keener form of suf- 
fering, even in this life, than that whiclTcomes from 
the consciousness of error, and of opportunity sacri- 
ficed by folly. Yet here we see but dimly. What 
may, and, indeed, what must not such misery be in 
the great light of the future life, if a soul, cumbered 
by and subject to mere earthly and bodily pas- 
sions, is forced to see that, by comparison with the 



NATURE OF THE FUTURE LIFE. 147 

liiglier good, and in tlie liglit of the greater intelli- 
gence, it had given itself to the merest trivialities ; 
had devoted its powers to objects of no real vahie 
and to others repugnant to those higher things 
which, over there, must be seen of all — the bad as 
well as the good — to be the only real sources of 
enduring joy and life. 

We may thus reasonably conceive for the wilful 
wrong-doer, by the operation of what may be called 
a natural law of the spiritual world, a far keener 
punishment than is thought of in the common no- 
tion of a physical Hell. As the man who violates 
physical laws in this life must suffer for that in his 
body, so he who has violated moral or spiritual laws, 
though he may by great care seem to evade punish- 
ment — the result of his violation of laws — in this 
world must, we may reasonably believe, suffer here- 
after ; because^ as we know, spiritual pains are keener 
than physical. 

On the other hand, spiritual joys and satisfactions 
are far greater, even in this life, than those which 
arise from or pertain to the body. Love, friend- 
ship, the fulfilment of duty, the sacrifice of self for 
others, the love of knowledge, the sense of admira- 
tion for the wonders of creation, and the apprecia- 
tion of harmony in the works and designs of God — 
all these are independent of the body ; they may be 



148 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

experienced by and become the most potent and en- 
during causes of happiness in this life to even those 
who have the feeblest bodies, or are cast in the least 
fortunate situations. Transferred to a broader life, 
with greatly enlarged powers, and relieved of the 
bonds and slavery in which we here live to our phys- 
ical part, we can conceive of these sensations and ex- 
periences as yielding an infinitely larger measure of 
happiness and content than we are even capable of 
imagining here. 

This conception of the future state has nothing 
repugnant to any laws we know of. It is in strict 
harmony with all we know. It satisfies the senti- 
ment of justice which is implanted in all our souls. 
That requires a theory of life which shall, in some 
way, equalize all the varied conditions of life. A 
religion which should teach that only the intelligent, 
or only the wealthy, or only the healthful, or only 
certain families or combinations of men should enjoy 
happiness at any time, would be manifestly demoral- 
izing, not only to those excluded, but even more so 
to those included in the terms. To deny the possi- 
bility of existence after this life is to assert just this 
monstrous injustice. It is to declare that, as all the 
happiness we can attain, on this supposition, is in 
the present life, only the shrewdest, the most selfish, 
the luckiest, the strongest, the most cunning, and 



NATURE OF THE FUTURE LIFE. 149 

least scrupulous shall enjoy even the very moderate 
and variable degree of happiness attainable by our 
race here. Such a thought is depraving and ruinous. 

Taken by itself the present life is a failure. To 
complete it and justify it, the life beyond the grave 
needs to be superadded to it. 

But, granted a future life, then, plainly, that must 
be absolutely Democratic. All men must be equally 
capable, regardless of circumstances, even here, to 
prepare themselves for it. The theory of Jesus an- 
swers this reasonable demand. It requires neither 
learning, nor wealth, nor great station, nor peculiar 
opportunity to enable a man to comprehend the 
conditions, and, with God's help, reasonably to fulfil 
them. The golden rule, the Sermon on the Mount, 
are intelligible to all conditions of men. Hence, 
Jesus presents God to us as a just God ; as one who 
is no respecter of persons ; as the loving Father of 
all our race. On this theory it matters not where 
we live, or in w^hat circumstances, whether we are 
fortunate or wretched, raised up or depressed — to 
every human soul the door of Heaven stands equally 
open. He shall only conform himself to a law so 
simple that the smallest child can, witli patience, be 
made to comprehend it, and which appeals at once 
to the heart even of a savage — the law of returning 
good for evil, and loving your neighbor as yourself. 



150 GOD AND THE FUTL^RE LIFE. 

We cannot prove scientifically that our life is to 
be continued beyond the brief term in which we in- 
habit our bodies. But neither can any man prove 
the contrary. Of the two, far the most possible, the 
most probable, and the most credible is the assertion 
of Jesus, that we are undoubtedly to live beyond the 
grave. 

"We cannot hiow whether there is a future life ; 
hence Jesus, who so positively and constantly de- 
clared it, still insisted on Faith as the great element 
needed to enable us to control and properly shape 
our lives here. 

Kor is it necessary for our welfare here or beyond 
that we should have this certainty of knowledge. 
"We can do our duties without knowing. Hence, 
when one of the Apostles sought to pry into the 
hidden future, Jesus answered him, " What is that 
to thee ? Follow thou me !" 

It certainly is not stranger or less credible that 
you should continue to exist hereafter than that you 
now exist. On the contrary, given my mind, judg- 
ment, hopes, desires, extending far outside of and 
beyond the present brief life, and given at the same 
time the boundless space and possibilities w^hicli I 
see, for the exercise of all my higher powers in a 
life outside of the body, and as a reasoning being, 
going entirely on probabilities, the extinction of my 



NATURE OF THE FUTURE LIFE. 151 

spirit with the body would seem far more wonderful, 
less to be expected, than the continuance of my soul 
beyond the present life. 

Death — physical death merely — is, to those wlio 
first see it, a far more amazing and incredible phe- 
nomenon than life. Death, in the sense of extinc- 
tion, is, in fact, incredible to mankind. It is repug- 
nant to our thoughts. We do not really believe it. 
No one who has lost a dear friend but finds it, in 
his inner soul and hidden thoughts, far easier to ex- 
pect that the lost shall return to his sight and com- 
pany at any moment, even in this life, than that he 
or she is absolutely and eternally extinct. 

Yet physical death is as common a fact as life 
itself. 

The death of our bodies is a change, and we are 
so constituted that all change is annoying to us. 
Men and women are creatures of habit, and we very 
early contract a habit of living in our bodies, which 
becomes more fixed as we pass middle life : so that 
it is, for the most part, youth only which rashly risks 
the loss of life. Yet the decay and final loss of the 
body we inhabit is only like a compulsory removal 
from an old and rickety to a new and more conven- 
ient house ; and it is, on the whole, the most inter- 
esting experience open to man, so far as we know. 
None other compares Vv^ith it ; and, barring the phys- 



152 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

ical repugnance to it wliicli the Creator has, for 
obvious reasons, implanted in all living creatures, 
and not in man alone, there is no reason why we 
should not look forward to this inevitable change 
with the same intelligent curiosity with which we 
should anticipate the exploration of an unknown 
but probably intensely interesting country in this 
life. 

Continued conscious life in another place after 
the death of our bodies is not an improbable suppo- 
sition, but clearly the contrary. We have the nec- 
essary outfit for it. We are capable of it. There 
is boundless space for us. The further we penetrate 
here into the mysteries and secrets of nature, the 
more reason we have to believe that of both time 
and space there is infinite quantity ; and that beyond 
the grave there is room for all. 

Is it not an incredible suj)position that this earth 
of ours — one of the smallest planets of what astrono- 
mers know to be one of the smaller solar systems 
whose number itself is infinite — is the only spot in 
the universe inhabited by conscious beings ? 

Our lives are, in any case, a mystery. '' Whence, 
and whither?" are the two questions against whicli 
philosophers in all ages have broken their heads, 
ever since men began to do more than eat, drink, 
and multiply like the beasts. We cannot solve these 



NATURE OF THE FUTURE LIFE. 153 

mysteries here. We can but dimly account for or 
explain even a few of the commonest phenomena of 
our present lives. But the more carefully we com- 
pare our own lives, motives, acts, habits, and tenden- 
cies with our surroundings and our boundaries, the 
more forcibly we are drawn by reason to the con- 
clusion that there is a method and design in all, 
looking far beyond our present life. 

We see, for instance, in many aspects of human 
society a singular care exercised for the preservation 
of the individual's liberty of action. Consider for 
a moment what would be the effect on human so- 
ciety, and on the possibility of individual develop- 
ment of character, if the span of life were consider- 
ably prolonged! "What would be the effect on a 
large section of our race if men of great and pecul- 
iar genius, like Caesar, Bonaparte, or the first Van- 
derbilt, could live even two hundred and fifty 
years ? In that time the first Yanderbilt, with his 
faculties unimpaired, would have mastered all the 
railroads and other means of intercommunication 
in America. Bonaparte would have subjugated 
the greater part of the inhabited world, and have 
stretched his iron and stupid despotism over all 
Europe. A few such men, w^itli only so much 
time to work in, would impose their fetters on the 
will of the human race, and wrench men's lives 



154 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

and minds out of their normal relations to God 
and to IS^ature. 

Thought, experience, will, life, remain free in the 
mass of individuals, largely because in the mysteri- 
ous plan of the Creator seventy years complete the 
natural life of man, and soon after fifty his facul- 
ties and energies grow dull, even though too often 
his greed, ambition, and other evil passions increase 
immoderately. 

Again, we give om' lives here to the pursuit of 
happiness, and yet know, or may know out of all 
human experience, that it is impossible for man to 
realize even the lowest ideal. We are defeated at 
every turn. A glutton, whose notion of bliss is 
abundance of pleasing food, may, with labor and 
good-luck, attain that ; but indigestion, gout, or lack 
of appetite presently spoils his enjoyment. " It is a 
world of disappointment," complained an old sailor ; 
"you can't be drunk all the time, and when you 
get sober you have a headache !" This forecastle 
philosopher rudely epitomized the experience of 
mankind. It is only the joys of the higlier, the 
spiritual, life which bring no reaction and breed no 
disappointed hopes. 

Our present life is filled with pains, anxieties, and 
sorrows, with, on the whole, but a moderate admix- 
ture of futile delights in the most fortunate. All 



NATURE OF THE FUTURE LIFE. 155 

that we see, feel, and know of it, all onr capacity for 
suffering, and for happiness alike — all has sense, co- 
herence, and ceases to be repugnant to our ideal of 
justice, if we suppose that we are but temporary so- 
journers here, and that the main object of our brief 
lives in the body is that we may train, develop, and 
educate our nobler faculties for another sphere of 
existence and of activity. 

Consider, again, how vile is the merely animal part 
of man when it shows itself through the removal of 
moral or social restraints ; how absolutely and greatly 
different from and worse than that of the beasts. 

Consider how mysterious and dangerous is the 
influence of the body on the spirit; how jDhysical 
habits creep on our nobler part, and subjugate and 
take pos'session ' of it, until we seem to see, in the 
last degradation of even powerful intellects, the body 
swallowing up, incorporating the spirit, and leaving 
the vicious and selfish animal propensities supreme. 
A miser is blindly covetous, not only beyond his 
needs, but beyond the time when he can use his 
hoard. A lewd person becomes the victim of de- 
praved thoughts which remain to torture him long 
after his body has ceased to urge him, and w^hen it 
refuses to respond to his desires. By many instances 
we see that the spirit may become depraved and re- 
main so independently of the body, even here. How 



156 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

reasonable, then, is the thought that, granted a fut- 
ure life, the depraved spirit must cany its vile de- 
sires and passions into that state, to torture it by the 
double suffering of a slavery to evil in a condition 
where the bad impulse can receive no satisfaction, 
and where its viciousness and its error are clearly 
seen " face to face." 

We remember — is not that a mystery of myste- 
ries ? Why should we not rather forget ? Our bod- 
ies decay, yet our memories remain ; torpid, but easi- 
ly revived. We forget nothing — alas ! not even the 
trivial or the base, which we would gladly forget. 

JSTature is hard and cruel. Man's whole life is 
spent in a contest with her. God might, doubtless, 
have made this warfare easier to us ; He would, per- 
haps, have done so had He not seen that the contest 
is needed to develop our higher and nobler faculties ; 
to make us fit, perhaps even to make us capable, of 
immortality. 

Consider how strange a mystery is time ! AYe 
measure it with the greatest accuracy, and yet, so far 
as our sensations go, an hour is a curiously unfixed 
quantity. In suffering, hours are as days ; in joy, 
they are as minutes. We speak of millions of years, 
of millions of miles. Try to compare in your minds 
these vast terms with the words eternity, infinity, 
and how pregnant is the Psalmist's saying, that to 



NATURE OF THE FUTURE LIFE. 157 

God who dwells in eternity "a thousand years are 
but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in 
the night ;" and Peter's, " But, beloved, be not igno- 
rant of this one thing [as a first principle in consid- 
ering God's dealings with mankind], that one day is 
with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand 
years as one day." 

Is it not an important thought that all the re- 
searches and discoveries of modern science serve 
only to make what we call time more trifling, eter- 
nity more real, and space less bounded ? 

Do you complain that God has left us in such 
absolute intellectual ignorance of the hereafter-? 
Does it appear to you in itself unreasonable? If 
God intended us to be free agents, we could be so 
only on the condition that we should hnow nothing 
of the future even in this life. Let us have any, 
even the least, certainty and positive knowledge that 
there is a future life, aside from revelation, or even 
of the future in this life, and some of the essential 
conditions of our existence, as free agents, at once 
disappear. In the light of such knowledge we 
should be free no longer, but coerced. The scheme 
of what we call Nature has clearly not our physical 
comfort for its end, but, through the struggle forced 
upon us, our moral and intellectual elevation, and 
preparation for another and higher stage of exist- 



158 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

ence. Hence, as Paul picturesquely says, " ^Ye are 
as tliose who seek a country." 

Let us, therefore, being forced to choose, and hav- 
ing intellectually the power of choice — let us elect 
the most probable, and act on the theory, the Faith, 
that conscious life is for us eternal. That if it has 
begun here it is to end never. On that theory alone 
we can sensibly conduct our lives here, and make the 
most of them. 

And you may safely admit that, revelation aside, 
it is only a theory ; for tlie other is no more, and is, 
on the whole, as all reasoning shows, far less prob- 
able. 



PRAYER. ' 159 



XV. 

PRAYER. 

Prayer is when you speak with God. 

E"aturally this is, or should be, mainly, a private 
conversation. Hence, Jesus insisted, "When thou 
pray est, enter into thy closet." 

He to whom we speak when we pray is "Our 
Father in Heaven," and Jesus impressed upon his 
hearers, continually, this relation of children to a 
father. As all His instruction was reasonable, so 
also this ; for if there is a future life this describes 
the obvious and natural relation between men and 
Him who created men. 

We are weak. He is strong ; we are ignorant. He 
is wise ; we are short-sighted, He sees the end from 
the beginning. 

Similar in a degree are the differences between 
little children here and their earthly father. They 
cannot comprehend his purposes, much less his laws, 
which, though made for their good, seem in their 
eye harsh and often tyrannical. They ask, and he 
denies ; they prefer their own wisdom, but he com- 



160 GOD AND THE FUTUKE LIFE. 

pels them to his ; they plan, and he interrupts their 
plans. Only as they come to years of discretion do 
the children of wise and thoughtful parents even 
begin to comprehend the care which has, oftenest 
unknown to them, guided their early years ; the lov- 
ing kindness which denied, and disappointed, and 
compelled, and, with endless efforts, led the young 
body and mind to good habits and good principles, 
and which, meantime, had often to bear with diso- 
bedience, misconduct, inattention, and misapprehen- 
sion. 

In this relation, as Jesus taught, men and women 
stand towards God, '' Our Father in Heaven." " Ex- 
cept ye become as little children," He said, "ye can- 
not enter the Kingdom of Heaven." 

l^ow, what a loving father expects of his chil- 
dren is, not that they shall, at once, be unfailingly 
perfect. He knows that to the building up of the 
character of his children go years of patient training 
and personal experience ; that this work is not com- 
pleted even when they are young men and women. 
His first desire is that they shall love him; for it 
is only when he has secured their love and confi- 
dence that they will be inclined patiently and con- 
fidingly, or faithfully, to follow his instructions. 
Through their love he looks to see the growth of 
faith in his superior wisdom ; that faith which. 



PRAYER. 161 

while it will not, as lie knows, sliield tliem against 
disappointments, or absolve them from obedience to 
his will, yet tempers their sorrows, and makes sub- 
mission reasonable, and hence easier. 

A child asks many things of its parents, and is 
often refused. It asks many things which seem to 
it reasonable, but which the greater wisdom of the 
parent denies, because they are hurtful or unreason- 
able — not because he takes pleasure in denying the 
wishes of his children. 

"What, then, shall we, grown men and women — but 
still children in all wisdom compared with our Fa- 
ther in Heaven — what shall we ask Him for when 
we pray ? 

If He is really our Father, I think we may un- 
doubtedly so speak to Him as a child here speaks 
to the father of whose love it feels assured. "We 
may tell Him all that is in our hearts. We may 
ask Him for everything which seems to us desirable. 
We may come to Him with all our cares, burdens, 
anxieties, sorrows, wishes. " Cast youi' care (or anx- 
iety) upon the Lord, for He careth for you," says 
the Scripture. 

But we are to ask not as petulant, or greedy, or 
unreasonable beings ; we are to pray, knowing that 
He to whom our prayer is addressed is infinitely 
wiser than we who ask, and knows what we cannot 

11 



162 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

know — what is for our best good, lie would not 
be our Father if we could not go to Him with all 
our fears and hopes, our sorrows and joys — if we 
could not open to Him our hearts and our thoughts. 
But neither would He be our Father if He should 
use no wisdom in the answers to our prayers ; nor 
should we be dutiful or loving children if we asked 
without confidence in His love and wisdom. 

The sum of all prayer to God is in these words : 
" Thy will be done." But is it not the same with 
every request which a thoughtful child makes of 
its parents? Is it not the same with every prayer 
which a good soldier addresses to his general? Is 
it not the natural, the proper and necessary sum of 
every prayer made by an ignorant person to one of 
greater intelligence or wisdom ? "We wish ardently 
for many things in this life : how often and often 
we see, later, that had our desires of the time been 
granted, they would have been for us the greatest 
misfortunes ! 

"I thank God oftener for those wishes which 
have been ungratified than those which were ful- 
filled," said a middle-aged man — and only spoke the 
common experience of most men and women who 
have lived considerate and intelligent lives. 

What we call "natural laws" are the common 
rules of that household in which God is "our Fa- 



PRAYER. 163 

tlier." We may violate those laws, but this viola- 
tion brings its own punishment. Does that seem 
hard ? Or unreasonable ? Would it not be really un- 
reasonable if God had provided either that it should 
be impossible for us to break these laws, or that we 
should not suffer from doing so? If God is our 
Father, we may reasonably regard it as an evidence 
of His interest in us that he leaves us at liberty to 
break His laws, and to bring upon ourselves the 
punishments which follow ; because this experience, 
often sorrowful enough, this suffering from which 
we shrink, secures what, in view of the future and 
real life, is the needed development of our faculties 
and powers. A wise father knows that it is the 
child which has burned its fingers, and not that 
which has been persistently guarded by nurses from 
doing so, which is most certain not to play with fire. 
The prayer of faith is necessarily the prayer of 
him who believes that God will do that Avhich is for 
the best ; of him who does his duty, and willingly 
leaves the result to God. On any other considera- 
tion prayer would be the unreasonable appeal of a 
creature of finite and very limited intelligence to a 
servant of absolute power without intelligence — that 
is to say, it would be an absurdity. You have proba- 
bly read of what were foolishly called '' prayer tests," 
which disclosed this singular notion, that God is to 



164 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

be regarded not as a guide and helper for us in spir- 
itual things, but rather as a powerful but subordi- 
nate being forced to do oxir will, if only we scream 
loud enough and unanimously enough to attract His 
attention. It was to such aj)peals as this that Jesus 
made answer, ^'A wicked and adulterous generation 
seeketh a sign." 

When we speak with God, when we ask some- 
what of Him, it should surely be with a right view 
of the relations of the things we desire. We have a 
right to ask Him for those things which are neces- 
sary to us : these are help and strength in the effort 
to do our duties, and to avoid wrong -doing; for 
guidance in our lives ; for His blessing on our plans 
and efforts, that we may have wisdom to direct them 
rightly ; for courage and serenity of soul under diffi- 
culties, disappointments, and sorrows ; for wisdom to 
conduct our lives aright, and in such manner that 
their general tendency shall be to prepare and train 
our spirits for the future life. 

Shall we, then, not bring to Him, also, our dis- 
tresses here, nor ask for safety out of peril, for secu- 
rity in life and health, for prosperity, for recovery 
from illness? 

If God is our Father we cannot help, as children, 
but bring all these matters before Him. But the 
" prayer of Faith " which we read of must surely be 



PRAYER. 165 

the prayer of liim who appreciably remembers the 
true relations of things. In the eyes of God the All- 
seeing, death — physical death — must appear but a 
minor, perhaps even a trivial incident in the life of 
the individual — the coming home from school, rather 
than the painful leaving home for school. So of all 
other and what we are accustomed to think lesser 
griefs. We reasonably believe that He sees their 
true bearing, their right relation to the great sum 
of the individual's life and experience. Is it not for 
us, also, to strive for this broader outlook ? and if, 
as reason and Faith alike demand, we attain to this, 
must it not necessarily guide our petitions to Him 
whom we call our Father ? 

In the biography of the Confederate general Syd- 
ney Johnston, written by his son, there is this touch- 
ing passage : " He spoke little of his inner life ; but 
once, in Austin, he said that a clergyman had been 
urging upon him the benefit of prayer, and added, 
' I did not think it necessary to tell him that it is 
many years since I have closed my eyes in sleep 
without prayer. Indeed, I feel that I cannot thank 
God enough for His goodness to me. Beyond that 
thanksgiving I almost dread to go — His care is so 
great and my view so narrow, that I do not know 
how to ask God for anything better for me and 
mine than — His will be done.' " 



166 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

In a great storm at sea, when the ship was mo- 
mentarily expected to founder, the passengers gath- 
ered in the cabin, and one was asked to pray. Stand- 
ing up, with his hands folded, he said, " Oh God, 
our Heavenly Father, Thy will be done, whatever it 
may be." 

The loss and sorrow w^hich turn your thoughts 
from this to the other life ; the care or disappoint- 
ment which forces you to see the vanity of human 
wishes and plans, and leads you to set your hopes 
higher — these may be infinitely greater sources of 
happiness to you than the most continued security, 
prosperity, and success. 

Surely we may ask God to spare us suffering and 
sorrow ; but surely, considering our relations to Him, 
our ignorance and His wisdom, we ought to ask, as 
Jesus prayed on the Mount of Olives, "Father, if 
thou be willing, remove this cup from me; never- 
theless, not my will, but thine be done." And as to 
Him in His agony, so doubtless to other faithful 
souls, there will appear " an angel unto Him from 
Heaven, strengthening Him." 

" All things work together for good to them that 
love the Lord and do His commandments." Is it 
not for us to pray mainly that we shall be able to 
turn to our own and lasting good, to the improve- 
ment of our immortal parts, all the events of our 



PRAYER. 167 

lives, be they joyous or sorrowful ? that thus, as we 
"justify the ways of God to man," we may draw 
food, and not poison, for our daily bread ? 

It is not necessary that you should continue to 
live ; but it is necessary that you should live rightly. 
To do that, you need that Divine help w^hich you 
have a right to pray for. That is the main thing in 
life — the only real thing. 

In the affairs of this present life we do not know 
— ^we cannot foresee what is for our good. That we 
should make known to God our wishes is reasonable ; 
that we should expect these wishes to be granted as 
of course is unreasonable, considering our own igno- 
rance and short-sightedness, and absolute incapacity 
to discern even the mere physical future, much less 
to foresee what circumstances will best serve to 
train us for the other and infinitely more impor- 
tant life. For the affairs of this life the true at- 
titude is to do our duty ; to be diligent, careful, dis- 
cerning ; to shape our lives according to His com- 
mandments, and to leave the rest to Him "who 
careth for us." 

" If you want to be a sailor, the first thing you 
must learn is to do what the captain tells you," said 
an old seaman to a ship's boy. " I know that very 
well," replied the little boy. "If the captain tells 
you to jump overboard, you must jump at once," 



168 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

continued the wise old quartermaster. " But I can- 
not swim ; I should drown/' said the boy. " That's 
none of your business, my boy," was the reply ; 
"that's the captain's business. Yours is to jump 
overboard when he orders you to." 

That was the old rule of the sea, and it made 
men — brave and dutiful men — of the boys. It is 
the true rule of our lives towards God — to do our 
duties, and leave the result to Him. It is only as 
we live in this attitude towards our Father who is 
in Heaven, that we are able to keep our souls in 
peace and rest. 

To live, and to live rightly, is not an easy task — 
God cannot help knowing that. 

Prayer is when you speak with God. It may be 
that you have nothing to say to Him. 

Then it is only respectful to keep silence. 

Cultivate, however, as a means of comfort, of sol- 
ace, of help towards well-doing, and towards serenity 
of soul, the habit of prayer — the habit, I mean, not 
of saying over set or meaningless phrases, but of 
speaking with God. It will lighten your cares. It 
will insure you good company. It will help you to 
consider your life, its meaning and purpose ; to re- 
gard, in the right light, its joys and sorrows, its 
gratifications and disappointments. The spirit of 
prayer is the spirit of submission to a higher will, 



PKAYER. 169 

and not that merely, but to an infinitely wiser and 
more intelligent will than yon own. 

If, by any chance, you do not need this Divine 
help and guidance, then do not ask it. Prayer is 
for you, not for God. The father does not so much 
need his children as they need him ; his care, protec- 
tion, and help. Doubtless your parents are happy 
if they possess your love and confidence ; but they 
are so mainly because that enables them to instruct 
and benefit you. 

But you will be unfortunate if you attain to years 
of discretion without such experiences of life, and 
such knowledge of your own weakness and inade- 
quacy to any true living, as will make you desire 
and need constantly to ask our Father in Heaven 
for help. 

All men who have risen above the intellectual 
condition of a pig in a sty have felt this need of 
some outward help in their lives to what they knew 
to be right living. "When we look into our hearts 
and examine ourselves, we see that we are " prone 
to evil, as the sparks fly upwards," and that '' the 
heart of man is deceitful above all things and des- 
perately wicked." '^ Allowing everything to be an 
instinct [in man] which anybody has ever asserted 
to be one," says John Stuart Mill, ^'it remains true 
that nearly every respectable attribute of humanity 



170 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

is the result, not of instinct, but of a victory over in- 
stinct. "^ ^ ^ It is only in a liiglily artificial condition 
of human nature that the notion grew up, or I be- 
lieve ever could have grown up, that goodness was 
natural." And again : " Of the social virtues it is 
almost superfluous to speak, so completely is it the 
verdict of all experience that selfishness is natural. 
By this I do not, in anywise, mean to deny that 
sympathy is natural also. ^ '^ ^ But sympathetic 
characters, left uncontrolled and given up to their 
sympathetic instincts^ are as selfish as others. The 
difference is in the Tcind of selfishness — theirs is not 
solitary^ hut sympathetic selfishness,'^^ 

Scripture and one of the greatest of modern philos- 
ophers thus agree as to the natural character of man. 
But you need no other evidence than your own con- 
science. Examine your conduct, your motives, your 
thoughts, and you discover that you are far more 
easily and constantly moved to evil than to good. 
It requires a constant effort to keep even a toler- 
able control over our evil passions and propensities. 
"For the good that I would, I do not," says St. 
Paul ; " but the evil which I would not, that I do ;" 
and this is the experience of all men. Against the 
evil which thus asserts itself in us, and wars with 
our right and reasonable living, we are forced con- 
tinually to strive. In this strife you may pray for 



PRAYER. 171 

the help of God — that He may give you, at least, 
the desire for good. Here it is profitable to you 
to cultivate intimate relations with the Heavenly 
Faith. Here you may ask, in the certainty that your 
earnest prayer will have answer. 

It may be that you do not feel the need of this 
assistance. In that case you are free to do without 
it. Jesus not only taught us how to pray — He 
urged frequent, constant prayer ; but as something 
needed for our own uses, our own protection, and 
not as the abject' homage of a subject to a tyrant. 



172 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 



XVL 

CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

Does the fact of a future life lessen for us the im- 
portance or interest of the affairs of the present ? 

On the contrary, I think you will see that this 
consideration is needed to give to the present stage 
of our existence its real value and interest. To hold 
otherwise would be to assert that the blind drifting 
of a wreck at the mercy of wind and current is more 
important than the fixed course of a ship bound for 
a port, and making a voyage of design and purpose. 
The master of such a ship has many cares and anxie- 
ties; he needs skill, foresight, prudence, watchful- 
ness. He meets head -winds and treacherous cur- 
rents, storms and baffling calms. He cannot always 
lie on his course, and he may be beaten off for a 
time by adverse gales ; but he has always his port 
in mind, and his whole voyage is full of life, of in- 
terest and importance, because, and only because, to 
him, it has this definite purpose. 

"We are free, here, to choose moral good or evil 
for our lives, though evil is easier to us than good, 



CONDUCT OF LIFE. 173 

as it requires less effort of tlie crew of a ship to let 
her drift than to hold her to her course. Our phys- 
ical lives, also, are largely under our own control. 
We inherit much, and we are subject, more or less, 
to our surroundings ; but it is easy and mischievous 
to over-estimate the power of these influences. JSTone 
of them, nor all of them, suffice to prevent man from 
maintaining true relations to God and to his fellow- 
men. 

On the whole, the possession of wealth and power 
is, perhaps, the influence most strongly adverse to 
his right living who has them. Hence that deep 
saying of Jesus to the rich man : " One thing thou 
lackest ; go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and 
give to the poor, and follow thou me !" Yet, as He 
added to his disciples, " with God all things are pos- 
sible ;" and so the world has seen beneficent rulers, 
and rich men who, though not without great and con- 
stant care and labor, so managed that their wealth 
did not become directly or indirectly their curse. 

As to poverty and distress, as to want and afflic- 
tion, as to friendlessness and misfortune — these do 
not harden their hearts who suffer them; on the 
contrary, it is among the very poor that we see the 
most ready and uncomplaining self-sacrifice ; it is 
when men are desolate and afflicted that they are 
'moved to seek God. 



174 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

In our bodies we are subject to natural laws, 
in common with other creatures ; but, unlike other 
creatures, men are able by their intelligence and will 
to conquer adverse circumstances of many kinds ; to 
" subdue the earth." " Our wills in their degree 
modify the course of nature," says that profound 
naturalist. Dr. Asa Gray, "subservient though that 
be to fixed laws. By our wills we make these laws 
subserve our ends. We momentarily violate the 
uniformity of nature." You may make of your life 
here largely what you wish. But to do that you 
must plan definitely, and must strive not merely 
with industry, but intelligently. IS'o man's fort- 
unes are so humble that he may not live an individ- 
ual life ; and it is that kind of living only — ^that 
maintenance of your individual will and character 
against all influences and pressure of society and 
surroundings which makes the man's life valuable 
or important, or even useful, to himself. 

You become an intelligent and substantive being 
only as you strive to do what you have tliought out 
for yourself to be the best and the right. It is in 
the strife to realize their own ideals that men be- 
come strong and intelligent — whether for good or 
for bad depends upon the choice they have made. 
To be a mere machine is not to be a man at all. 
The world was given us to conquer. Life was given 



CONDUCT OF LIFE. 175 

you that you should, by your own will and efiEoi-ts, 
maintain it as your o^vn life, and not suffer yourself 
to become, so far as your thoughts, your aspirations, 
your consent go, a mere insignificant fraction of 
that silly aggregate which we call Society. " For 
what is a man advantaged," asked Jesus, "if he 
gain the whole world and lose himself ?" 

Is, then, your life here under your own control 
to the degree I have suggested, and whicli is neces- 
sary to enable you to live a true and individual life ? 
Undoubtedly. 

IS'ot without care, not without intelligent care, not 
without a constant struggle against evil inclinations 
and habits, not without thought, deterjnination, the 
exercise of judgment and will — not, even, without 
suffering ; and assuredly not without much and con- 
stant self-denial. 

It needs the exercise of all your faculties to be a 
man — an immortal soul. 

It is much easier to be a pig, and that career, also, 
is open to you ; for in this world we are at liberty to 
choose. 

But do not make the miserable mistake of holding 
Providence, or fate, responsible for your manner of 
life. " Ohne Phosphor kein Gedanke," the famous 
dictum of a German man of science (" Without plios- 
phorus there is no thought "), may have its true side 



176 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

— for it is only as mucli as to say that, in this life, 
without hands we cannot take hold ; without a stom- 
ach we cannot digest ; without a body we cease to 
live here in this world. But beyond this it has no 
sense or pertinence, as you may easily see by many 
instances. 

Of all merely physical joys and advantages, for 
instance, health is undoubtedly by far the greatest. 
With sound health you may confidently look to 
accomplish any object you have at heart. "With 
life, health, and patience, nothing is too difficult to 
achieve in this world. ISTow, pray notice that good 
health is at your command. It requires only your 
intelhgent care to attain and keep it. The obvious 
proof of this lies in the well-known fact that persons 
of naturally feeble frame and constitution often live 
long and accomplish much. They have been com- 
pelled, as the very condition of living at all, to re- 
frain from excess, and to observe the laws of health 
with care. 

Do not, therefore, blame " the mysterious hand of 
Providence " for those incidents of your life w^hicli 
care and prudence could have prevented. " God 
helps those who help themselves," and His point of 
view is different, and much further - reaching than 
ours. It is clear that He designed us to increase our 
intelligence and our wisdom by the study of those 



CONDUCT OF LIFE. 177 

laws according to wliich tlie world about us goes on. 
The fire which burns our fingers forces us by suffer- 
ing to the knowledge of its effects. The intelligent 
observance of natural laws suffices to prevent the 
greater number of those physical ills and misfor- 
tunes of which mankind complain, and which they 
are too apt to lay at the door of Providence. 
Moderation in living secures health ; moderation in 
the pursuit of your objects insures security against 
serious losses and disappointments. To do your 
duty to others is to seize on the greatest source of 
happiness attainable here. 

Good health is a result of moderate living. Be 
moderate in all things; that insures not merely a 
healthy body but a clear spirit. It is the immod- 
erate and selfish pursuit of fortune, ambition, amuse- 
ment, which depraves the man physically, and also 
spiritually. It puts him out of perspective with 
the real world ; he loses the right relations and pro- 
portions of things, and flings away the large future 
for the petty present. In that immoderate pursuit 
of any object the blood is heated, the grosser, the 
merely animal part of us becomes unduly powerful, 
and gains the upper hand. I could not discover a 
di-unkard in the records of the life-long moderate 
drinkers of beer and wine in the German commu- 
nistic societies in this country ; and I could not help 

12 



178 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

but attribute so singular a fact to their habitual 
moderation in life, their freedom from anxious cares 
about careers, fortunes, fashions, and personal am- 
bitions. Long life, and a healthful long life, may or 
may not be desirable ; but that it is easily attainable 
is sufficiently shown by the mortuary statistics of all 
our communistic societies. 

'No selfish living is healthful or natural. It is 
what you do for others that is useful to yourself, 
and that only. It is as you serve your fellow-men, 
and strive to make the lives of others happier and 
better, that you attain happiness and a healthful 
spirit for yourself. Self-sacrifice is the essential of 
Christian life, and the means to any satisfactory life 
either here or beyond. Teach yourself early to take 
interest in the lives of others. Give some part of 
your time to the benefit of your fellows ; it is the 
best ^'investment" you can make, for it will not 
only procure you the love of others, but it will 
broaden the foundations of your own life. No one 
is so humble or so poor that he cannot thus give a 
part of himself for the benefit of his fellow-men ; if 
no more, his example of cheerful industry, modera- 
tion in living, thoroughness of work, honesty, and 
loving kindness, if he is the least in the community, 
gradually permeates it with his own spirit, as the 
fragrance of violets imperceptibly fills a room. Tin- 



CONDUCT OF LIFE. 179 

obtrusive well-doing is, perhaps, the greatest influ- 
ence for good in any community. A good mechanic 
or artisan — thorough, intelligent, kind, and cheerful 
— no matter how apparently inconspicuous his place 
in the community, is likely to be the most potent 
man for good in his circle ; his life is of more solid 
and enduring value to the men and women among 
whom he lives than those of fifty or a hundred 
" men of wealth and influence," so called. 

1^0 merely selflsh living is healthful for either 
the spirit or the body. But to unselfish living goes 
constant and courageous self-denial, and the culti- 
vation of a spirit of independence. To do right 
against temporary aberrations of public opinion, or 
against the fixed prejudices of those among whom 
you live ; to live your own life contentedly, and re- 
fuse to follow the general example; to refuse to 
put out your hand for the things regarded as de- 
sirable and enviable by the mass; to practise mod- 
eration in the midst of the general hurly-burly, and 
prefer your own objects to those of the multitude 
— this kind of living is not easy ; but it is the only 
way of life to him who has a just value for life 
at all. 

You need hope for no really good thing without 
labor. Nothing for nothing is a law which applies 
to all parts of our lives : do not try to evade it, for 



180 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

jou cannot. ]N"either knowledge nor good-fortune, 
neither right living nor enjoyment, nothing worth 
having comes easily, or without persistent labor and 
self-denial. There are no exceptions to this law; 
there is no such thing as good-luck. The unlucky 
man has lacked persistence, or tact, or concentration 
of purpose : but no one has these qualities without 
having laboriously acquired and strengthened them. 

Pursue your aim with industry and intelligence, 
therefore ; expect nothing of fortune. But examine 
your plans of life to see if they really tend to good ; 
if in their accomplishment you will benefit others 
as well as yourself. Try to foresee what effect the 
achievement of your ends, and your labors for that 
purpose, are likely to have upon your spiritual life. 
Many men have believed that it is possible to push 
one's purposes too forcibly, and that success may 
become a great curse; and for the proof that this 
is true you need not go far to seek in any com- 
munity, for the examples are but too abundant of 
men who have gained wealth at the cost of health, 
or power at the cost of character. 

Don't speculate. It is an attempt to get some- 
thing for nothing; and if it does not fail immedi- 
ately, so much the worse for you, for it is certain 
to be a calamity to you. Kot only is easy got easy 
spent, but, what is of more importance, what is got 



CONDUCT OF LIFE. 181 

in these ways does not train yon in the getting it ; 
and wealth is so dangerous a possession, even to the 
wisest and most moderate men, that we need all the 
training we can get in the labors and sacrifices by 
which we may legitimately accumulate even a small 
surplus, to enable us to use it with only a very small 
degree of wisdom and safety to ourselves, and benefit 
to those about us. 

Prosperity is a great temptation even to good 
men. Jesus was not wrong when He declared how 
hard it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of 
Heaven ; meaning, of course, to fit himself for that 
state. If you carefully look about you, you will 
conclude that perhaps the industrious poor are God's 
favorites. 

The men who are engaged in the mere pursuit 
of wealth, or of any other selfish object, become 
narrowed in their views and grasp; their general 
judgment is distorted, weakened, as their particular 
aim engrosses them more ; and the mere pu^^suit of 
wealth, I would like you to believe, is one of the 
lowest, least satisfying, and least elevating forms 
which human exertion takes. 

'Not only is the pursuit of wealth an injury to 
your spirit and intelligence, but it is, in the major- 
ity of cases, an injury to others. Few men attain 
great wealth, or keep it, without oppressing, or, at 



182 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

the leastj lessening the opportunities and narrowing 
the lives of some others. Great possessions are very 
apt to separate their owners from those who serve 
them, and, in a degree, from mankind. Their sym- 
pathies are narrowed as the sense of power begotten 
by wealth increases. 

*'I11 fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, 
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay," 

is sound economy as well as good poetry. Hence, 
prefer rather to live among the poor than the rich. 
A community without industrious working-men, but 
made up entirely, or mainly, of the wealthy and 
their . dependents, is the poorest company you can 
get into. 

Avoid every pursuit which will separate either 
your interests or your life from the interests of the 
mass of the community. 

Plan your own life. Do not suffer yourself to be 
bullied by society or the general opinion of your 
friends. If you want very much to do something, 
and it is right and honest, go ahead and do it. You 
may fail at it ; you may have judged unwisely ; but 
at any rate you will have strengthened your will; 
you will have been yourself, and not the creature of 
other people's advice ; and you will have earned in 
experience more than money's worth. 



CONDUCT OF LIFE. 183 

This does not mean that you are selfishly to avoid 
or reject your duty to others, rightfully dependent 
on you. It may be your part to deny yourself the 
gratification of even a very strong impulse towards 
a favorite career or occupation — to give up your 
own will and wishes, for the sake of those dependent 
on you. Do that with a cheerful and manly spirit ; 
count yourself the happier, as you will be the better 
man, for having your duty so plainly marked out for 
you. 

With men as with machines it is never economi- 
cal to work up to the full power. It is a strain to 
do so. Hence it is an unwise though a common 
ambition which carries men into work which they 
can do only with diflSculty. Seek a career where 
you can do your best easily. It is better that the 
man should be too big for the place than the j)lace 
for the man. Better, in part, because he needs lei- 
sure ; he ought to be many-sided ; he cannot hope to 
know any one thing well unless he has had leisure 
and desire to know many others. 

Try, however, to learn some one thing thoroughly. 
No matter what it is, you will find that when you 
do know that one thing thoroughly, you will have a 
satisfactory knowledge of many others. All knowl- 
edge is closely inter-related. The mischief is that so 
many people only " know a little something." 



184 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

Tliorougliness of work is honesty, and honesty is 
the best policy even for this life. If God had made 
it otherwise. He would have introduced constant con- 
fusion into our lives. Hence, what you do, do with 
a will; put your best thought and skill into your 
w^ork, and try early to acquire the habit of doing 
this. It is not easy to fix yourself in that, but noth- 
ing-is more worth your while. The cheapest thing 
you can do is to pay your debts and do good work. 
Your test is what you owe to the world, and to 
yourself even more, no matter how humble the work 
may be. 

Therefore, value your work for the work's sake, 
and not for the reward or success it is to bring you. 
The laborer is worthy of his hire, but he is a poor 
creature if he works only for the wages he is to get ; 
and he will never do good work on that condition 
alone. A man, if he is really a man, values and hon- 
ors his work, takes pride in it, and does it well and 
thoroughly for its own sake, and for his own sake, 
and not for the wages. Hence, a good mechanic, or 
farmer, is always an intelligent man — very often the 
most intelligent and the wisest man in the commu- 
nity. He has found it needful for his own satisfac- 
tion to know one thing thoroughly ; and to do that 
he has necessarily to know something of a good 
many others. No kind of work is so low that this 



CONDUCT OF LIFE. 185 

is not true of it. I knew a gardener's laborer wlio 
earned liis daily bread with a spade, but wLio had 
made himself a good florist, and no mean botanist. 

N^or is any work so high in the scale but that he 
who does it for the reward alone, be this money, 
or place, or power, will become a narrow and stupid 
soul. 



186 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 



XVIL 

CONDUCT OF LIFE (Coniiniied). 

Take care to do all in tlie spirit of love and good- 
will to your fellow-men : wliatever is done in the 
spirit of hatred, malice, or envy must fail. It can- 
not and does not succeed in the long-run, and it will 
surely injure him who does it. 

Teach yourself to despise ambition; it is one of 
the meanest of the passions. Human society needs 
all the help it can get from its bravest and ablest 
members ; if you have somewhat of capacity for 
good, do not be impatient or fearful lest the world 
should not discover it. Do your work, and train 
yourself to be content with that. 

This is not easy, for young people hunger for rec- 
ognition ; but it is your only wise and manly course. 
If you have ability you will be found out, never 
fear. Men say of a young fellow that he is " ambi- 
tious," and the foolish world counts it a merit in 
him; and he presently, under this vulgar stimulus, 
thinks it legitimate and even honorable to push his 
own fortunes ; comes to regard success as the main 



CONDUCT OF LIFE. 187 

object, and thinks lie has done well when, by dint 
of vigorous elbowing and scheming he has contrived 
to push himself into a place much too big for him, 
where he rattles around like a pea in a tin pot. 

Personal success is a matter of very minor conse- 
quence. The success of a noble cause, of a great 
and beneficent idea — that is another thing ; but even 
that its supporters can but rarely hope to see victo- 
rious. It is theirs, as true men fee], to do what 
they can, to suffer such obloquy as such men are 
pretty sure to encounter in a good cause, and to be 
content wdth the consciousness that they have done 
their duty. Nor is it too much to say that, what- 
ever they may suffer, they have their sufficient re- 
ward in the development and training of their own 
souls, which those receive who riglitly and wisely, 
not in hatred or fanatically, but with a loving spirit, 
combat error, or uphold the truth against oppression. 

Whether you win or not is not the real question, 
but whether you have lived unselfishly and done 
your best for your fellow-men in that place, how- 
ever humble, in which you are cast. 

"Magnify your office," which means that you 
shall think highly of your work. I know an errand- 
man who has been the most faithful and intelligent 
of errand-men for thirty years. I know no one who 
is prouder, or more justly proud of his work ; and I 



188 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

have known Presidents and cabinet ministers who 
were far less worthy of respect, and, in fact, far less 
respected than this humble servitor, who does his 
daily drudgery with the pride and enthusiasm of a 
king. 

It may seem to you a hard saying, but it is never- 
theless true, that only that w^ealth or that fame 
which comes to you without your own seeking can 
possibly be useful to you, or even in any high sense 
creditable to you. No good work perishes or re- 
mains unknown. You will always receive all the 
fame and credit in the world to which your ability 
and work entitle you ; and if you should not, so 
much the better. The world will owe you some- 
thing, and of that you may think with just pride — 
but not with discontent. 

Do not, therefore, aim to be rich, or to be famous, 
or to be in high places, or to be fashionable, or a 
favorite in what is called society Aim to be just, 
cheerful, patient, hopeful, and to do your duty well 
towards others. 

Do not allow yourself to become a mere machine. 
In the present condition of what we call civilization it 
is difficult to avoid this. The whole tendency of our 
social arrangements is more and more to divide the 
community into two unequal parts — the few capital- 
ists, employers, and the multitude who are their ser- 



CONDUCT OF LIFE. 189 

vants. Now, "service is honorable ;" but the servant 
should be something more than that. He should 
strive to save some part of his life for himself. 
You may read of men who have passed a long life 
in making, not pins, but only the heads of pins. 
God, who is very good, has so contrived the spirit- 
ual part of us, that even men and women thus un- 
fortunately placed may be good and truly heavenly- 
minded. But, if you can, you are entitled to choose 
a better part in life for yourself ; and if you are to 
do no more than make pin-heads, try, first, to do that 
in the very best way possible ; and, second, reserve, 
if you can, a small part of your life for something 
else and better — some line of intelligent thought and 
study — and remember that a lawyer who knows or 
cares about nothing but his cases, or a merchant 
who thinks only of his ventures and ledgers, these 
are even worse off than the men who contentedly 
spend their lives in making pin -heads. They be- 
come narrowed and dwarfed, and the more easily if 
they are prosperous and comfortable. Too often 
such men become like swine, glorying in the admi- 
rable arrangement and comfort of their sty. 

I do not like to see young people pick out easy 
places for themselves. Comfort and ease may be 
necessary to the aged and feeble-bodied, but youth 
ought to hold them in healthful contempt, and pro- 



190 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

fer a task or career which involves some hardship 
and self-denial. In that way they become men; 
their wills are braced, their faculties trained, their 
good habits fixed, their intellects briglitened. Ee- 
sist, therefore, the temptation to barter your inde- 
pendence for mere physical ease or pleasant social 
surroundings. Choose, rather, if you are free to 
choose, a struggle of your own with the world. It 
is good and fit that youth should be enterprising 
and adventurous. 

Prefer to learn several things, and not one only. 
Do not be afraid of hardship and solitude : by ex- 
perience of these men become masters of them- 
selves ; they learn how to get on with men ; how to 
"fall on their feet," as the saying goes ; how to get 
good out of even mishaps and failures ; they make 
themselves truly independent, not only of men but 
of fortune. Herodotus has a fine passage about the 
ancient Persians, to whom, when they proposed to 
leave their own small and rugged domain, to possess 
a wider and richer, Cyrus gave this warning : " To 
prepare thenceforth, not to rule, but to be ruled 
over, for that delicate men spring from delicate 
countries, and it is not given to the same land to 
produce excellent fruits and men valiant in war. 
So that'- — continues the old historian — "the Per- 
sians, perceiving their error, withdrew, and yielded 



CONDUCT OF LIFE. 191 

to tlie opinion of Cyrus; and tliey chose rather to 
live in a harren country and command^ than to cul- 
tivate fertile plains and he the slaves of other s."^^ 

I have been told that when Thoreau was a young 
man he made lead-pencils, and made them very well. 
But one day he gave it up. His friends were 
amazed ; he was doing well, and likely to be pros- 
perous ; he made the best kind of pencils, and they 
told him he ought by all means to go on. But he 
replied, ^^I have now made just as good pencils as 
I ever can make. I have done that thing as well 
as it is possible for me to do it; hence, it is time 
for me to stop that and go at something else." I 
think he was right. Being free of hand, having no 
one depending on his labors, he had not only a right 
to stop what had become a mere mechanical drudg- 
ery, but it was his duty to himself to do so. 

Observe, if he had had wife and children or other 
helpless ones justly depending on him, his duty 
w^ould have been to go on patiently and honestly 
making lead-pencils. I knew once a painter who, 
if he had had leisure, would have become famous ; 
some of his w^orks are justly admired, and rank very 
high. But he had a wife and numerous family ; to 
have cultivated his art would have been to expose 
them to want, or at least to deprivation of com- 
forts, and being a good man, lie deliberately gave 



192 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

up the work and career in which he might have 
won fame, and gave his life contentedly to bread- 
and-butter labors for those he loved and was bound 
to cherish. On the whole, he was a nobler man 
than Thoreau. 

Men are like cabbages, which, as market gardeners 
will tell you, grow the stronger for being several 
times transplanted. In Germany, in former times, 
a young mechanic out of his apprenticeship was 
compelled to go forth into the world with his tools, 
and pass two or three years in foreign parts. Thus, 
it was rightly held, he became the abler mechanic 
and the better citizen. In his travels he acquired 
information ; he was forced to match himself against 
other men in his calling, in order to earn his bread 
and the expenses of his journey ; and this experience 
tended to make him a more civilized creature. 

"Wise parents begin early to form in their chil- 
dren a habit and love of reading, which should be 
but a stepping-stone to a love of knowledge. In 
these days, when even college life is full of bustle 
and striving and cramming and without proper lei- 
sure, to fix this habit early is of the greatest impor- 
tance ; for a genuine love of knowledge is hardly to 
be acquired under the pressure of a higher school, 
and we see constantly young men graduated and 
entering the turmoil of business or professional life, 



CONDUCT OF LIFE. 193 

content with wliat they have been forced to get by 
rote in the schools, and without that true resource 
and solace which he has whose mind is awakened, 
and eager to secure and apply some leisure time to 
explore new fields of science and thought. 

But choose your books carefully. They are to be 
friends — do not carelessly take enemies into these 
places. Take care what you suffer to drop into 
your memory. It is hard to forget, and, alas ! the 
vile and mean sticks to our memories more readily 
than the noble or good. 

Whatever business or calling you are engaged in 
as your bread-and-butter work, remember that, use- 
ful as this is, you are right to regard it as your 
enemy; keep a part of your life free from this and 
for yourself ; and value success less because it is to 
give you wealth or luxury, than because it may 
yield you some leisure to devote to other things 
than your calling and to higher ones. 

Men, like some trees, begin to die at tlie top. 
Make an intelligent use of your brains, in order to 
secure health and long life. Two classes of men are 
noted for longevity — slaves, and students of large 
and broad intelligence ; the first because they have 
been constrained to simple and very regular living 
in the open air, and without great anxieties. The 
others because it is the brain rightly and constantly 

13 



194 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

used which keeps the body in order, and thus pro- 
longs life. 

You can never be too old to learn ; and there is 
probably no better time to go to school than after 
fifty. 

Count it a misfortune, therefore, if your bread- 
and-butter work takes up all your time and strength, 
and see if by better management or a judicious econ- 
omy in expense you cannot redeem some part of 
your life from this thraldom. Every man needs to 
be sometimes alone. This is necessary in order that 
you shall be able to " take stock of yourself," con- 
sider your life, get time for a look ahead ; and that 
you shall not live in your higher and spiritual life 
from hand to mouth. Without such leisure and sol- 
itude we lose the true perspective ; the present as- 
sumes undue and factitious importance, and hides 
from us the future, as a high fence conceals a land- 
scape. What you need is to maintain a clear out- 
look, and this for your present well-being, but even 
more for its bearing on the future lifeT An effec- 
tive man is one who sees things as tliey are ; but how 
can you do this if you see only a part ? 

Here you will see the importance of that day of 
rest which is called "the Christian Sabbath." Pro- 
testing against the empty formalities with which the 
Pharisees had filled up this day, Jesus said, " The 



CONDUCT OF LIFE. 195 

Sabbatli is made for man, not man for the Sabbath." 
On this day we may and ought to drop our cares, 
our plans, and strivings, and take time to rest not 
only the body, but the mind and heart. It is the 
day on which to reflect, to consider our lives and 
their tendency, our habits and our future. 'No one 
who labors but is grateful for this day. 'No one can 
abuse it by laboring on it, without injury to his body 
as well as his spirit. Even the animals are the bet- 
ter able for their work if they have this day exempt 
from labor; so that the commandment which for- 
bids the use of beasts of burden on that day is — 
as are all the commands of God — entirely reason- 
able, and, to use a phrase of these days, "sound 
political economy." JS^or can you misuse this day 
of rest for vain or frivolous purposes without injury 
to your spiritual nature, which needs rest, quiet, 
peace, relaxation, as much as your body. 

The plan of life which I have mapped out will 
seem to you, perhaps, to require a good deal of self- 
denial. Yet according to this plan the wisest and 
best of our race have lived. Cultivate a taste for 
poverty. Plain living breeds sound thinking. But 
the whole tendency of the present time is against 
plain living, and to be contented with little has 
come to be counted a vice. Even the humblest are 
tempted to what seems to them luxurious living ; 



196 GOD AND THE FUTUKE LIFE. 

and because over tlie greater part of Christendom it 
is now conceded that "all men are born free and 
equal," therefore it is held that all men and women, 
to be respectable, must dress and live alike — as 
though that were needed to assert their equality of 
rights. The universal rule is to work harder, so as 
to spend more prodigally. But the wise man knows 
that he had better spend less and keep some leisure 
for himself ; for thought, study, and healthful recrea- 
tion. F. W. Newman wrote wisely : " To count but few 
things necessary is the foundation of many virtues." 

Do not, therefore, clutter your life with many use- 
less things. It is a habit which grows. Some people 
are no better than the slaves of old china or silver ; 
and many houses are only museums on a small scale, 
whose owners and inhabitants are the least interest- 
ing of the contents, and often the least thought of. 
A love of simple pleasures is a small fortune to him 
who has it. They are the only lasting ones. 

Hence, the country is to be preferred to the city. 
Cities are for diversion, for change, for the conven- 
ience of special studies ; but sensible men live in the 
country. There you become hardy, you gain that 
knowledge which is, on the whole, best worth know- 
ing — of trees, flowers, animals, and nature in general. 
Children learn early, in the care and subduing of 
animals, in training a dog or breaking a horse, to be 



CONDUCT OF LIFE. 197 

humane and to control tlieir own tempers. Country 
employments and amusements bring health and a 
strong and well-directed will. And besides this, in 
country living simple habits are more easily main- 
tained. The sight is not tempted by the multifari- 
ous objects of city shops, whose display leads men 
and women and even children to be discontented 
and envious, and to regard as necessaries of life what 
are really vast aggregations of superfluities. I knew 
some little girls brought up in the country to whom 
a stick doll was a source of as great happiness as the 
most magnificent satin-clad wax doll to a city child, 
and they were the happier and more healthful in 
body and mind, because their desires had not been 
excited by the sight of the city Christmas shops. 

Moreover, by country living you prepare constant 
and invaluable resources for your old age. The city 
man grows helpless as the sere and yellow leaf of 
life comes on. He has become dependent on the ex- 
citements of society, and as his contemporaries die, 
or are scattered, he grows lonely. His house, fur- 
nished as splendidly as may be, he knows so w^ell 
that its narrow limits bore him. He has no resource 
but business, and seeks to drown his loneliness in 
the excitement of adding to his fortune. His even- 
ings are his secret terror. Why, do you suppose, are 
clubs, theatres, and other places of amusement in 



198 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

great cities so crowded ? Because the brilliant light- 
ing, the crowded houses, the varied colors are a re- 
lief from the dull monotony of homes w^liere the in- 
habitants fear to face themselves, and find no com- 
pany so dull as their own. As we advance in years 
there is a vigorous struggle of the body to get the 
upper-hand, and the mischief of city life is, that it 
encourages this by the ease, comfort, convenience, 
gross feeding, and late hours to which it invites, and 
which all tend to make our spirits sluggish and in- 
ert. In California I knew an old Spaniard who, at 
sixty -seven, rode a hundred miles on horseback in 
a day and thought little of it; and I have often 
admired the simple, manly habits of the Spanish 
rancheros, who passed the day contentedly on horse- 
back, with a little pinola or parched wheat, a lump 
of sugar, a cup of water, and a cigarette for their 
mid-day meal, and slept comfortably on the ground 
wrapped in a blanket, and with the saddle for a 
pillow. 

You may object that modern civilization has made 
this denial of bodily comforts and luxuries needless ; 
pretty things are nearly as cheap as ugly ones in 
these days; and why should you sleep on a hard 
bed when you can just as well have a soft one? 
But the answer is, that you are the less dependent 
on the mutabilities of fortune, the less a slave of the 



CONDUCT OF LIFE. 199 

will of others, the more truly a free man, as yon 
have curbed and trained your body, and made it 
hardy and easily obedient to your higher will. 

If you want to achieve any object here, it is of 
the first importance to you to live. Merely to live 
makes up a considerable part of every worldly suc- 
cess ; in some careers we see that this has been the 
greatest part of it. Few men achieve anything val- 
uable or important before forty ; many do not even 
begin a career before then; and some, like Hum- 
boldt, Von Moltke, and George Bancroft, retain their 
intellectual activity for forty and even fifty years 
longer. Such men you will find have maintained 
all their lives simple and regular habits. But from 
forty to seventy is the life almost of a generation of 
men, and he who has kept his body as his servant, 
or useful machine, may in that long period achieve 
almost anything he sets his mind to. 

When, however, the body has been pampered and 
indulged, intellectual activity, judgment, and will de- 
cline rapidly after fifty ; it is then mainly the phys- 
ical man who continues to exist, and to make more 
and more imperative demands on the spiritual part, 
warping the judgment, and controlling the will and 
energy that remain to low and often base ends. 

Begin early, therefore, to deny your body ; so you 
may hope to retain all your life that supremacy of 



200 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

the intellectual over the mere physical part which 
alone makes life valuable or important. Eat moder- 
ately, sleep enough, and in as pure air as possible ; be 
careful to contract no physical habits whatever — for 
that is to make yourself subject to your meaner part, 
the body, which becomes an intolerable and tyran- 
nical master when once it gets the upper-hand, even 
in small things. The force of habit is very great, 
and bad habits become fixed with astonishing quick- 
ness. A great part of life consists in acquiring good 
and useful habits, and in avoiding and resisting the 
force of bad. 

When we subdue to our wdll, or " break,'' as it is 
called, a colt or a young dog, what we really do is 
to habituate it to particular duties or exercises. The 
dog is taught that, when he hears certain words of 
command, he must at once perform certain tricks ; 
the colt is accustomed to the bridle, the saddle, or 
the harness, and to the habit of going at a certain 
gait and none other when he has these upon him ; 
and the habit of doing certain things under given 
circumstances soon becomes fixed, and a ruling force 
in the animal, so that an old war-horse, long since 
discharged and turned to peaceful uses, pricks up 
his ears at the sound of the bugle, and strives to 
find his accustomed place in the cavalry troop. In 
men, also, the force of habit is strong ; but as our 



CONDUCT OF LIFE. 201 

lives are more various, and our intelligence of a 
quite different order, from that of the lower animals, 
and as our wills are free, so good habits at least sit 
more lightly, and we need to exercise greater care 
to maintain them. The habit of regular and con- 
tinued labor, for instance, is more difficult for a 
young person to acquire than for a horse. A great 
many men and women never thoroughly acquire it, 
but go through life half doing many things, begin- 
ning a new project and leaving it unfinished for 
another, and inefficient simply because they have not 
the habit of systematically completing one piece of 
work before they begin another. Most of us begin 
our active life with this vice of ill-regulated and un- 
systematic exertion. Many of us are never cured 
of it ; and to persons of an active imagination it is 
a matter of extreme difficulty to learn to be thor- 
ough, and to measure the things to be attempted by 
the time and strength which can be spared for them. 
Even to the most persistent of us the daily recur- 
rence of a task becomes tedious and irritating, and 
this although we have deliberately set ourselves to it. 
You will be the happier, and the more effective 
and useful members of society, if the spur of want, 
the necessity for regular and systematic labor to gain 
your daily bread, in early life, fixes in you this habit 
of working patiently at a task and completing it. 



202 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

without diversion to another. This supremacy of 
your will over your desires, hard to gain, is invalu- 
able in life ; it is the first step towards the attain- 
ment of that faculty which John Stuart Mill defines 
as "the power of sacrificing a present desire to a 
distant object or general purpose," and which I think 
to be the highest intellectual attribute of man, the 
possession and exercise of which is necessary, not 
only to the attainment of any valuable object in 
this life, but more still to the proper training of 
our spirits for the future life. 

In all parts of our lives we have constantly to 
sacrifice the less to the greater, the immediate to 
the future. To secure and retain health you must 
go to bed and rise at regular hours, eat at fixed 
times, deny yourself those things which, while pleas- 
ant, experience tells you are hurtful : that is to say, 
your will must keep yourself under a number of 
irritating restraints. And so from your earliest days 
your proper training consists in more or less irksome 
and often painful self-control. The acquisition of 
knowledge at school is irksome ; the daily recurring 
task of the workman, in whatever calling, from the 
lowest to the highest, is irksome ; the acquisition of 
any virtue, of the habit of being or doing good, and 
not bad, in any one direction, is a matter of difficulty 
and of constant struggle, and has been so accounted 



CONDUCT OF LIFE. 203 

by wise men in all ages. Only that course of action 
wliicli is useless to others, and hurtful to ourselves, 
seems easy. 

That you should abhor a lie is a matter of course ; 
but to slight your work, to do it imperfectly, is to 
lie. It is to be a sham; and when a man is con- 
tented with shams he has given up a great part of 
his real self to the devil. He has consented to be 
consciously dishonest. 

Do your best, therefore ; but do not do it to excel 
others. That is to cherish a vile and vain spirit. 
Teach yourself to rejoice in every other man's suc- 
cess that is worthily gained ; to be pleased with the 
ability shown by others, even if it is shown to your 
own disadvantage. " Let the best man win " is the 
true motto in life ; and if another wins over you, 
all the more you should remember that if he wins 
fairly, by greater excellence or ability, he ought to ; 
that if he is better fitted for your place than you, 
you have no right there ; while, if he wins unfairly, 
that is a contest into which you cannot, for your 
own self-respect, engage with him. 

Make your friends slowly; but remember that 
real friendships must be made in youth. A part of 
the strength of this tie depends on tradition. Tour 
friend of yesterday cannot bear the same relation 
'to you as he who became your friend a dozen years 



204 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

ago ; and no true friendship has grown up or pros- 
pered without a communion of sacrifices, dangers, or 
trials. Hence it is said, and truly, that after forty 
men do not make new friends. Life is not long 
enough. 

Maintain a decent reserve with all men, even with 
your best friends. 

Be careful to keep your sorrows, disappointments, 
misfortunes and disagreements, your affairs in gen- 
eral, to yourself. The public has nothing to do with 
them, and sensible and reputable people do all they 
can to avoid publicity of every kind. 

Any true friendship requires a certain identity of 
thought and aspiration in those w^ho are thus to be 
joined ; especially, I think, a sameness of religious 
faith; for it is scarcely to be supposed that two 
persons w^lio think oppositely or differently on this, 
the highest and most important range of thought 
attainable by mankind, can feel for each other that 
confidence and esteem which are necessary to friend- 
ship. 

Count yourself happy if you have found two or 
three friends. More no man is likely to possess. 

Do not separate your life entirely from that of the 
community in which you live. "Forsake not the 
assembling of yourselves together," says the Script- 
ure. Tlie most useful and important social relation 



CONDUCT OF LIFE. 205 

you can establish for yourself is membership in a 
Christian church. 

A church is a society for the encouragement of 
its members in right living, and for the better or- 
dering of benevolent efforts, the succor of the poor, 
friendless, and suffering. The congregation ought, 
therefore, to be composed of men and vromen in all 
the varying circumstances of life. The church is 
nothing if it is not democratic. Under its roof all 
ranks and grades, the poor and the wealthy, the 
well-informed and the illiterate, should be brought 
together in a true brotherhood, whose common Fa- 
ther is God. In such a churchy rightly constituted, 
and living together in the relation of a larger fam- 
ily, you may be sure that the wealthier and more 
fctelligent may learn more or gain more of true 
wisdom from their humbler brethren, than these 
from the former; for it holds true that the indus- 
trious poor are God's peculiar care. 

The restraints thrown about you by your members- 
ship in a church are all useful and important. Do 
not think that forms are useless. Social restraints 
are very necessary to all men and women. Isolation 
is dangerous to human beings ; it requires uncom- 
mon strength of resolution and forethought not to 
deteriorate in solitude, and the maintenance of cer- 
tain forms, which is rightly insisted on by civilized 



206 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

society as a protection against deterioration not only 
of manners but of character, is never so necessary 
as in solitude or in country life. Kinglake, the his- 
torian, has a striking story of an officer who later 
became a distinguished general in the Crimean War. 
Being in early life sent into the Canadian wilderness 
to superintend the rude labors of a force of rude 
men, which obliged him to rough work all day, he, 
to preserve himself from the deterioration which he 
felt threatened him in such a life, determined that 
he would every day dress for dinner as carefully, and 
have that meal served w^ith as much form and cere- 
mony as if he had been in London, and spend the 
evening, if in solitude, still with all the semblance 
of a high civilization about him. When asked later 
how he survived his years in the backwoods he gave 
this expedient as the only reason. You may get a 
useful and important lesson from this. 

iTow, of all social restraints and good influences 
membership in a really Christian church, one im- 
bued with the essential spirit of Christianity, yields 
the most valuable and imi:)ortant fruits. In what is 
called " society," in the social circle formed by your 
friends and acquaintances, you see only peo]3le sub- 
stantially of the same walk in life, circumstances, 
and habits of thought which you also have, and the 
chief object is amusement, rest, relaxation from care, 



CONDUCT OF LIFE. 207 

and the benefit of more or less intelligent associates. 
In a true clmrcli you sliould meet, on much higher 
ground and in more important relations, men and 
women of many and different walks in life. You 
may see there, as nowhere else, the real value and 
importance of a genuine democracy. If your rela- 
tions to your fellow-members are such as they ought 
to be, you will presently be profoundly impressed 
with the fact that "manhood and worth from no 
condition rise;" and if you should happen to be 
even the most learned, or the most highly placed, 
or the most wealthy or otherwise prominent mem- 
ber of this society, you may learn, and will learn, 
very many lessons of goodness, of the highest moral 
worth, from the lowliest of your fellow -members. 
You will see how independent goodness and moral 
excellence are of mere outward circumstances ; with 
w^hat courage those submit to ills, with what gener- 
osity they give, with what sound intuitions they see, 
with what clear and living faith they worship, whose 
lives are far less favored than your own. And these 
lessons should be of more worth to you than many 
sermons, and will humble your pride, as you see how 
much better, how much less selfish, more patient, and 
more Christlike, often, are the poor than the wealthy 
and powerful of the land. 

In an ideal state of society the average industri- 



208 GOD ASD THE FUTUEE LIFE. 

ous man should, without pinching economy, have 
laid by enough at fifty to enable him and his wife 
the remainder of their lives to live in comfort. jS'ot 
that he should thereafter be idle, but that, retiring 
from the pursuit of wealth at fifty, he might there- 
after give his leisure to society, to works of public 
usefulness ; or, if he were not able or inclined for 
this, to a more natural and leisurely life, to the cul- 
tivation of his mind by books, and the pursuit of 
some special study. 

By such withdrawal more room would be left 
and more opportunity given for the young men 
coming forward in all pursuits of hfe; we should 
hear less of overcrowding, and there would be less 
greed and less deprivation in all the ranks of life. 
In short, we should see the present intense and in 
many respects almost ferocious struggle sensibly 
ameliorated. Of course there is no way by which 
society can compel men to thus regulate their lives 
and moderate their wishes, for it would be in vain to 
try to make men unselfish by act of Congress. But 
that is no reason why you should not, at the begin- 
ning of your active life, plan it on this scale. 

But to do this you need not only or merely to be 
industrious and faithful in the beginning of your 
life, and not wasteful ; what is of far greater impor- 
tance is, that you must accustom yourself early in 



CONDUCT OF LIFE. 209 

life to be contented with a moderate scale of living ; 
that you should early discover what is' absolutely es- 
sential to intelligent living, and firmly determine to 
leave off the unessential ; that you should accustom 
yourseK to be satisfied w^ith a degree of comfort not 
so great but that you may fairly hope to have laid 
by, at the age of fifty, the means of living on, on 
that scale ; and, what is still more important, have 
fixed the habits which will make you content to 
do so. 

It is an important help towards this to teach your- 
self early in life to see pretty things, and to like 
them, and to have a correct judgment about them, 
without coveting them. It will take a great deal of 
practice to make you perfect in this. 

But remember that pure air, sunshine, green grass 
and trees, a few flowers, access to good books, warmth 
in winter, and a moderate table and healthful dress, 
make up the absolute essentials of the later part of 
life. 

It is a great point carried to have always an ob- 
ject ahead of you in life. Until forty this is easy 
enough, if you are at all of a manly and enterprising 
disposition. But when you have come to the end of 
your first set of objects, when you have gained the 
standing-place in the world which you sought, then 
take care. At that point many men and women 

U 



210 GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

perish from mere inanition. They have secured 
fortune, or competence, and they spend the rest of 
their days in accumulating comforts and luxuries, as 
though a pig should make his sty more elaborately 
convenient. Or they sink into poor health, or to 
death, because, in fact, the end has come for them. 

If you have means to travel, the best time for this 
enjoyment is after fifty. You will then have read 
enough to make travel useful and profitable. 

Finally, remember always to maintain the true 
balance and perspective in your life. We are often 
curious to know how the other, the future life, will 
look to us : think sometimes. How will this life look 
to you from that other side ? How trivial and insig- 
nificant many of those which we thought the most 
important events, will seem from that point of view ! 
how vitally important some things which we thought 
little of here ! How grateful you will be there for 
much that seemed hardship, disappointment, or sor- 
row here at the time — how deleterious you will see 
were many events which caused you satisfaction. 

Yet that broader survey will be the first that can 
give you a true view of your life here. 



NOTES. 



I DID not choose to encumber my pages with foot- 
notes, because these disturb the attention of the read- 
er, and interrupt in his mind the course of the argu- 
ment. But I add here, at the close, several extracts, 
referring each to the chapter it is intended to illus- 
trate. 

NOTE TO CHAPTER VH. 

The following passage from the '' Ninth Bridgewater Trea- 
tise " of the celebrated mathematician Charles Babbage illus- 
trates so well, and by so interesting an instance, the difference 
between the supporters and opponents of the theory of Evo- 
lution, that, though long, I give it in full here. I am the 
more moved to do this because the volume from which I take 
it is no longer easily accessible except in public libraries : 

" To illustrate the distinction between a system to which 
the restoring hand of its contriver is applied, either frequent- 
ly or at distant intervals, and one which had received at its 
first formation the impress of the will of its author, foreseeing 
the varied but yet necessary laws of its action, throughout 
the whole extent of its existence, we must have recourse to 
some machine, the produce of human skill. But far as all 
such engines must ever be placed at an immeasurable inter- 



212 NOTES. 

val below the simplest of Nature's works, yet, from the vast- 
ness of those cycles which even human contrivance in some 
cases unfolds to our view, we may perhaps be enabled to 
form a faint estimate of the magnitude of that lowest step in 
the chain of reasoning which leads us up to Nature's God. 

"The illustration which I shall here employ, will be de- 
nved from the results afforded by the Calculating Engine; 
and this I am the more disposed to use, because my own 
views respecting the extent of the laws of Nature were great- 
ly enlarged by considering it, and also because it incidentally 
presents matter for reflection on the subject of inductive 
reasoning. Nor will any difficulty arise from the complexity 
of that engine; no knowledge of its mechanism, nor any 
acquaintance with mathematical science, being necessary for 
comprehending the illustration, it being sufficient merely to 
conceive that computations of great complexity can be ef- 
fected by mechanical means. 

"Let the reader imagine that such an engine has been ad- 
justed ; and that it is moved by a weight ; and that he sits 
down before it, and observes a wheel, which revolves through 
a small angle round its axis, at short intervals, presenting to 
his eye, successively, a series of numbers engraved on its di- 
vided circumference. 

" Let the figures thus seen be the series 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc., of 
natural numbers, each of which exceeds its immediate ante- 
cedent by unity. 

" Now, reader, let me ask how long you will have counted 
before you are firmly convinced that the engine has been so 
adjusted that it will continue, while its motion is maintained, 
to produce the same series of natural numbers ? Some minds 
are so constituted, that after passing the first hundred terms, 
they will be satisfied that they are acquainted with the law. 
After seeing five hundred terms, few will doubt; and after 
the fifty-thousandth term the propensity to believe that the 



NOTES. 213 

succeeding term will be fifty thousand and one will be al- 
most irresistible. That term will be fifty thousand and one ; 
and the same regular succession will continue ; the five-mill- 
ionth and the fifty-millionth term will still appear in their 
expected order ; and one unbroken chain of natural numbers 
will pass before your eyes, from one up to one hundred million. 
**True to the vast induction which has been made, the 
next succeeding term will be one hundred million and one ; 
but the next number presented by the rim of the wheel, in- 
stead of being one hundred million and two, is one hundred 
million ten thoiisand and two. The whole series from the 
commencement being thus : 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 



99,999,999 

100,000,000 

regularly as far as 100,000,001 

100,010,002 the law changes 

100,030,003 

100,060,004 

100,100,005 

100,150,006 

100,210,007 

100,280,008 



*' The law which seemed at first to govern this series fails at 



214 NOTES. 

the hundred million and second term. This term is larger 
than we expected, by 10,000. The next term is larger than 
was anticipated by 30,000, and the excess of each term above 
what we had expected form.s the following table : 

10,000 

30,000 

60,000 

100,000 

150,000 



being, in fact, the series of triangular nurribers^ each multi- 
plied by 10,000. 

"If we now continue to observe the numbers presented by 
the wheel, we shall find, that for a hundred, or even for a 
thousand terms, they continue to follow the new law relating 
to the triangular numbers; but after watching them for 2761 
terms, we find that this law fails in the case of the 2762d 
term. 

" If we continue to observe, wx shall discover another law 
then coming into action, which also is dependent, but in a 
different manner, on triangular numbers. This will continue 

* *'The numbers 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28, etc., are formed by adding 
the successive terms of the series of natural numbers thus : 

1 = 1. 
1 + 2 = 3. 
1+2 + 3 = 6. 
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10, etc. 
They are called triangular numbers, because a number of points 
corresponding to any term can always be placed in the form of a 
triangle ; for instance : 



10 



NOTES. 215 

through about 1340 terms, when a new law is again intro- 
duced, which extends over about 950 terms ; and this too, 
like all its predecessors, fails, and gives place to other laws, 
which appear at different intervals. 

" Now, it must be remarked, that the law that each number 
presented hy the engine is greater ty unity than the preceding 
numher^ which law the observer had deduced from an induc- 
tion of a hundred million instances^ w^as not the true law that 
regulated its action ; and that the occurrence of the number 
100,010,002 at the 100,000,002d term was as necessary a con- 
sequence of the original adjustment, and might have been as 
fully foreknown at the commencement, as was the regular 
succession of any one of the intermediate numbers to its im- 
mediate antecedent. The same remark applies to the next 
apparent deviation from the new law, which was founded on 
an induction of 2761 terms, and also to the succeeding law ; 
with this limitation only — that wliile their consecutive intro- 
duction at various definite intervals is a necessary consequence 
of the mechanical structure of the engine, our knowledge of 
analysis does not enable us to predict the periods themselves 
at which the more distant laws will be introduced. 

" Such are the flxcts which, by a certain adjustment of the 
Calculating Engine, would be presented to the observer. 
Now, let him imagine another engine, offering to him pre- 
cisely the same figures in the same order of succession ; but 
let it be necessary for the maker of that other engine, previ- 
ously to each apparent change in the law, to make some new 
adjustment in the structure of the engine itself, in order to 
accomplish the ends proposed. The first engine must be 
susceptible of having embodied in its mechanical structure 
that more general law of which all the observed laws were 
but isolated portions — a law so complicated that analysis 
itself, in its present state, can scarcely grasp the whole ques- 
tion. The second engine might be of far simpler contrivance ; 



216 NOTES. 

it must be capable of receiving the laws impressed upon it 
from without, but is incapable, by its own intrinsic structure, 
of changing, at definite periods, and in unlimited succession, 
those laws by which it acts. Which of these two engines 
would, in the reader's opinion, give the higher proof of skill 
in the contriver ? He cannot for a moment hesitate in pro- 
nouncing that that on which, after its original adjustment, 
no superintendence was required, displayed far greater inge- 
nuity than that which demanded, at every change in its 
law, the intervention of its contriver. 

" In turning our views from these simple consequences of 
the juxtaposition of a few wheels, it is impossible not to per- 
ceive the parallel reasoning, as applied to the mighty and far 
more complex phenomena of nature. To call into existence 
all the variety of vegetable forms, as they become fitted to 
exist, by the successive adaptations of their parent earth, is 
undoubtedly a high exertion of creative power. When a 
rich vegetation has covered the globe, to create animals 
adapted to that clothing, which, deriving nourishment from 
its luxuriance, shall gladden the face of nature, is not only a 
high but a benevolent exertion of creative power. To change, 
from time to time, after lengthened periods, the races which 
exist, as altered physical circumstances may render their abode 
more or less congenial to their habits, by allowing the natural 
extinction of some races, and by a new creation of others 
more fitted to supply the place previously abandoned, is still 
but the exercise of the same benevolent power. To cause an 
alteration in those physical circumstances — to add to the 
comforts of the newly created animals — all these acts imply 
power of the same order, a perpetual and benevolent superin- 
tendence, to take advantage of altered circumstances, for the 
purpose of producing additional happiness. 

" But, to have foreseen^ at the creation of matter and of 



NOTES. 217 

mind, that a period would arrive when matter, assuming its 
prearranged combinations, would become susceptible of the 
support of vegetable forms ; that these should in due time 
themselves supply the pabulum of animal existence; that 
successive races of giant forms or of microscopic beings should 
at appointed periods necessarily rise into existence, and as 
inevitably yield to decay; and that decay and death — the 
lot of each individual existence — should also act with equal 
power on the races which they constitute; that the extinc- 
tion of every race should be as certain as the death of each 
individual ; and the advent of new genera be as inevitable as 
the destruction of their predecessors; to have foreseen all 
these changes, and to have provided, by one comprehensive 
law, for all that should ever occur, either to the races them- 
selves, to the individuals of which they are composed, or to 
the globe which they inhabit, manifests a degree of power 
and of knowledge of a far higher order." — Babbage. 

"By a different distribution of atoms in the primeval world 
a different series of living forms on this earth would have 
been produced. From the same causes, acting according to 
the same laws, the same results will follow ; but from differ- 
ent causes, acting according to the same laws, different results 
will follow. So far as we can see, then, infinitely diverse liv- 
ing creatures might have been created consistently with the 
theory of evolution ; and the precise reason why we have a 
backbone, two hands with opposable thumbs, an erect stature, 
a complex brain, about two hundred and twenty-three bones, 
and many other peculiarities, is only to be found in the orig- 
inal act of creation. I do not, any less than Paley, believe 
that the eye of man manifests design. I believe that the eye 
was gradually developed, and we can in fact trace its gradual 
development from the first germ of a nerve affected by Jight- 
rays in some simple zoophyte. In proportion as the eye be- 
came a more accurate instrument of vision it enabled its pos- 



218 NOTES. 

sessor the better to escape destruction, but the ultimate re- 
sult must have been contained in the aggregate of the causes, 
and these causes, as f\xr as we can see, were subject to the 
arbitrary choice of the Creator." — Jevons. 

"Doubtless there is in nature some invariably acting me- 
chanism, such that from certain fixed conditions an invariable 
result always emerges. But we, with our finite minds and 
short experience, can never penetrate the mystery of those 
existences which embody the Will of the Creator, and evolve 
it throughout time. We are in the position of spectators 
who witness the productions of a complicated machine, but 
are not allowed to examine its intimate structure. We learn 
what does happen and what does appear, but if we ask for 
the reason, the answer would involve an infinite depth of 
mystery. The simplest bit of matter, or the most trivial inci- 
dent, such as the stroke of two billiard-balls, ofibrs infinitely 
more to learn than ever the human intellect can fathom. The 
word cause covers just as much untold meaning as any of 
the words substance^ matter^ thought^ existence. '''' — Jevons. 

NOTE TO CHAPTER VIII. 
The "How" we more and more comprehend; the "Why" 
remains as much a mystery as in the beginning of science. 
Thus, Tyndall, in his lectures on " Sound," explains the mech- 
anism of the ear, and how when sound-waves act upon or 
are propelled against the tympanic membrane, " this is thrown 
into vibration, its motion is transmitted to the ends of the 
auditory nerve, and afterward along tlie nerve to the brain, 
where the vibrations are translated into sound." This is an 
admirably clear explanation of " How " the sound-waves reach 
the brain; it gives us the mechanics of the phenomenon; 
but Mr. Tyndall adds : " How it is [he really means Wh}^] 
the motion of the nervous matter can thus excite the con- 



NOTES. 219 

sciousness of sound is a mystery whicli the human mind can- 
not fathom." 

Professor Tyndall here, with the frankness and honesty of 
a true scientific mind, noted for his readers the limitation of 
scientific research. There are, unfortunately, men of science 
who do not note this, even to themselves. Thus, the late 
Professor W. K. Cliflford apparently thought he had explained 
one stage of the coming about of the bodies w^hich form the 
universe: when he said "What they [the gaseous particles] 
have done is to fall together and get solid." 

Now, that may be a correct statement of the method of a 
mechanical operation ; but it does not tell us Why they thus 
fell together. Professor Clifford taught that, in considering 
the origin of the universe and of life, it was not necessary to 
consider the agency of a Creator. But there is, antecedent to 
the question. Why the cosmic dust " fell together and became 
solid," still another : Why should there have been these par- 
ticles or atoms ? 

I incline to insist here upon this question, because, since 
the chapter in which it is suggested was written, I have 
noticed an increasing disposition, among young students of 
science with whom I have conversed, to leave it out. Their 
attention has not been called to it by their teachers ; or not 
sufliciently to produce that impression upon their minds 
which, nevertheless, ought to be made ; and they are apt to 
believe that scientific inquiry has penetrated the real mystery 
of the universe ; whereas, in fact, as all profound scientists 
confess, it has only served to magnify that mystery of the 
origin, the Why of things. I therefore append here a num- 
ber of instances, to impress upon the reader that, while in 



220 NOTES. 

these days we know much, that knowledge shows us only 
that of the total to be known we know, in fact, very little. 
To repeat the wise saying of Professor Asa Gray : " We know 
more of how things go on ; but we know nothing of how 
things began." 

Tyndall on " Sound " says : " Light, like sound, is excited 
by pulsations or waves ; and lights of different colors, like 
sounds of different pitch, are excited by different rates of 
vibration." 

But no one knows Why this should be so. 

He adds: "The quickest vibrations which strike the eye 
have only about twice the rapidity of the slowest, whereas 
the quickest vibrations which strike the ear as a musical 
sound have more than two thousand times the rapidity of 
the slowest." 

Surely a very wonderful statement — but why all this should 
be so, and why it should not be different, science does not 
pretend to tell us. 

We know that a magnetic needle, when free to move, as- 
sumes a definite position, in general north and south. But 
we do not know Why it has this quality. 

A magnet polarizes all masses of iron in its neighborhood. 
Why it has this extraordinary action we do notinow. 

" The homogeneous is unstable and must differentiate itself," 
says Spencer ; and hence, in his opinion, comes the variety 
of human phases of intellectual condition. 

It is a very broad generalization. But suppose it to be 
well-founded : Why is the homogeneous unstable ? 

We know that " when we warm a piece of very cold ice 
the absorption of heat, the temperature, and the dilatation 



NOTES. 221 

of the ice vary according to apparently simple laws until we 
come to the zero of the Centigrade scale. Everything is then 
changed ; an enormous absorption of heat takes place without 
any rise of temperature, and the volume of the ice decreases 
as it changes into water." But w^e do not know why this 
happens as it does. 

It has been ascertained that "most flowering plants bear 
more seed when fertilized by pollen from another flower or 
from another plant, and are sometimes even sterile when fei'tilized 
hy tJieir own pollen. Hence the common need of insect visitors, 
and the relation thus established between animals and plants, 
the former involuntarily aiding the reproductive processes of 
the latter. Flowers are often so shaped as to favor the visits 
of useful insects, and similarly the legs and mouths of insects 
are appropriately formed to enable them to visit, profitably 
to the plants, their nectar-bearing flowers." 

All this looks like benevolent design by a wise and power- 
ful Creator — but we do not know whether He could not have 
attained the same end by other means, nor Why He selected 
these. 

To call a substance " protoplasm " surely does not explain 
the origin of life ; nor does it eliminate the idea of an intelli- 
gent Creator. " Protoplasm," says Jevons, " may be chemically 
the same substance, and the germ-cell of a man and of a fish 
may be apparently the same, so far as the microscope can de- 
cide ; but if certain cells produce men, and others as uniform- 
ly produce a species of fish, there must be a hidden constitu- 
tion determining the extremely different result. If this were not 
so the generation of every living creature from the uniform 
germ would have to be regarded as a distinct act of creation." 



222 NOTES. 



NOTE TO CHAPTER IX. 

A lady published some letters addressed by her to Pro- 
fessor Moleschott, in which the following sentiments occur : 

" The moral rule for each man is given by his own nature 
only, and is different, therefore, for each individual. What 
are excesses and passions by themselves ? Xothing but a 
larger or smaller overflowing of a perfectly legitimate im- 
pulse." 

A philosopher belonging to the other sex indulges in the 
following dithyrambus : 

"Enjoyment is good, and frenzy and love are good, but 
hatred also ! Hatred answers well when we cannot have 
love. Wealth is good, because it can be changed into enjoy- 
ment. Power is good, because it satisfies our pride. Truth 
is good, so long as it gives us pleasure; but good is lying 
also, and perjury, hypocrisy, trickery, flattery, if they secure 
us any advantage. Faithfulness is good, so long as it pays ; 
but treason is good also, if it fetches a higher price. Mar- 
riage is good, so long as it makes us happy; but good is 
adultery also for every one who is tired of marriage, or wlio 
happens to fall in love with a married person. Fraud is 
good, theft, robbery, and murder, if they lead to wealth and 
enjoyment. Life is good, so long as it is a riddle ; good is 
suicide also after the riddle has been guessed. But as every 
enjoyment culminates in our being deceived and tired, and 
as the last pleasure vanishes with the last illusion, he only 
would seem to be truly wise who draws the last conclusion 
of all science — i. e., who takes prussic acid, and that without 
delay." — Nation^ K Y. 

In Berlin, in 1878, a Socialist procession, consisting of men 



NOTES. 223 

women and children, marched through the streets with a 
banner which bore the legend : " There is no future life. Eat 
and drink. We want no hereafter." 

NOTE TO CHAPTER XIII. 

A friend who did me the kindness to read my MS. ad- 
vised me to omit the chapter on miracles, on the ground 
that I had given my attention to the discussion of natural 
laws, that my object was to show the reasonableness of Chris- 
tianity, and that the consideration of miracles might with 
profit be omitted. I was unable to agree with him; and 
for the reason that to say that an occurrence is impossible 
because it is contrary to natural laws, is to assert that we 
know the limits of phenomena, which, however, we do not 
know. But I think it well to insert here a passage from the 
Ninth Bridgewater Treatise of Charles Babbage, to show in 
what way so clear-headed a mathematician as that distin- 
guished author was able to discuss the question of" Miracles:" 

" It is proposed to prove that — 

" It is more probahh that any law, at the knowledge of ichich 
tve have arrived ly ohservation, shall he subject to one of those 
violations which, according to Hume's definition, constitutes a 
miracle, than that it should not he so subjected. 

" To show the probability of this, we may be allowed again 
to revert to the Calculating Engine, and to assume that it is 
possible to set the machine so that it shall calculate any cdge- 
hraic law whatever ; and also possible so to arrange it that at 
any periods, however remote, the first law shall be interrupted 
for one or more times, and be superseded by any other law ; 
after which the original law shall again be produced, and no 
other deviation shall ever take place. 

" Now, as all laws, which appear to us regular and uniform 



224 NOTES. 

in their course, and to be subject to no exception, can be 
calculated by the engine ; and as each of these laws may also 
be calculated by the same machine, subject to any assigned 
interruption, at distinct and definite periods ; each simple law 
may be interrupted at any point by a portion of any one of 
all the other simple laws : it follows that the class of laics sub- 
ject to intemiption is far mm^e extensive than that of laws which 
are uninterrupted. It is, in fact, infinitely more numerous. 
Therefore, the j^robability of any law with which we have 
become acquainted by observation being part of a much more 
extensive law, and having, to use mathematical language, sin- 
gular points or discontinuous functions contained within it, is 
very large. 

*' Perhaps it may be objected, that the laws calculated by 
such an engine are not laws of nature, and that any deviation 
from laws produced by human mechanism does not come 
within Hume's definition of miracles. To this it may be an- 
swered, that a law of nature has been defined by Hume to 
rest upon experience, or repeated observation, just as the 
truth of testimony does. Now, the law produced by the en- 
gine may be arrived at by precisely the same means — namely, 
repeated observation. 

"It may, however, be desirable to explain further the nat- 
ure of that evidence on which the fact, that the engine pos- 
sesses those powers, rests. 

"When the Calculating Engine has been set to compute 
the successive terms of any given law, which the observer is 
told will have an apparent exception (at, for example, the ten 
million and twenty-third term), the observer is directed to 
note down the commencement of its computations ; and, by 
comparing these results with his own independent calcula- 
tions of the same law, he may verify the accuracy of the en- 
gine as far as he chooses. It may then be demonstrated to 
him, by the very structure of the machine, that if its motion 



NOTES. 225 

were continued it would, necessarily^ at the end of a very long 
time, arrive at the ten-millionth term of the law assigned to 
it; and that, by an equal necessity^ it w^ould have passed 
through all the intermediate terms. The inquirer is now de- 
sired to turn on the wheels with his own hand, until they are 
precisely in the same situation as they would have been had 
the engine itself gone on continuously, to the ten-millionth 
term. The machine is again put in motion, and the observer 
again finds that each successive term it calculates fulfils the 
original law. But, after passing twenty-two terms, he now 
observes one term which does not fulfil the original law, but 
which does coincide with the predicted exception. 

" The continued movement now again produces terms ac- 
cording with the first law, and the observer may continue 
to verify them as long as he wishes. It may then be demon- 
strated to him, by the very structure of the machine, that, if 
its motion were continued, it would be impossible that any 
other deviation from the apparent law could ever occur at 
any future time. 

" Such is the evidence to the observer ; and if the superin- 
tendent of the engine were, at his request, to make it calcu- 
late a great variety of difierent laws, each interrupted by 
special and remote exceptions, he would have ample ground 
to believe in the assertion of its director, that he could so 
arrange the engine that any law, however complicated, might 
be calculated to any assigned extent, when there should arise 
one apparent exception ; after which the original law should 
continue uninterrupted forever. 

" Let us now consider the miracle alluded to by Hume — 
the restoration of a dead man to life. According to the defi- 
nition of that author, our belief in such a fact being contrary 
to the laws of nature arises from our uniform experience 
against it. Our personal experience is small : we must there- 
fore have recourse to testimony ; and from that we learn that 



226 NOTES. 

the dead are nexer restored to life; and, consequently, we 
have the uniform experience of all mankind since the crea- 
tion against one assigned instance of a dead man being so 
restored. Let us now iSnd the numerical amount of this evi- 
dence. Assuming the origin of the human race to have been 
about six thousand years ago, and taking thirty years as the 
duration of a generation, we have — 

GOOO 

= 200 generations. 

30 

"And allowing that the average population of the earth 
has been a thousand millions, we find that there have been 
born and have died since the creation 

200 X 1,000,000,000 — 200,000,000,000 individuals. 

" Such, then, according to Hume, are the odds against the 
truth of the miracle ; that is to say, it is found from experi- 
ence that it is about two hundred thousand millions to one 
against a dead man having been restored to life. 

" Let us now compare this with a parallel case in the calcu- 
lations of the engine ; and let us suppose the number above 
stated to be a hundred million times as great, or that the 
truth of the miracles is oj)posed by a number of instances, 
expressed by twenty places of figures. 

"The engine may be set to count the natural numbers — 1, 
2, 3, 4, etc. ; and it shall continue to fulfil that law, not mere- 
ly for the number of times just mentioned — for that number 
is quite insignificant among the vast periods it involves — but 
the natural numbers shall follow in continual succession, un- 
til they have reached an amount which requires for its ex- 
pression above a hundred million places of figures. If every 
letter in the volume now before the reader's eyes were 
changed into a figure, and if all the figures contained in a 



NOTES. 227 

thousand sucli volumes were arranged in order, the whole 
together would yet fall far short of the vast induction the 
observer would have had in favor of the truth of the law of 
natural numbers. The widest range of all the cycles of as- 
tronomy and geology combined sink into insignificance be- 
fore such a period. Yet shall the engine, true to the pre- 
diction of its director, after the lapse of myriads of ages, fulfil 
its task, and give that one, the first and onli/ exception to 
that time-sanctioned law. What would have been the chances 
against the appearance of the excepted case, immediately prior 
to its occurrence ? It would have had, according to Hume, 
the evidence of all experience against it, with a force myriads 
of times more strong than that against any miracle." — Bab- 

BAGE. 

" No experience of finite duration can give an exhaustive 
knowledge of the forces which are in operation. There is 
thus a double uncertainty ; even supposing the universe as a 
whole to proceed unchanged, we do not really know the 
universe as a whole. We know only a point in its infinite 
extent, and a moment in its infinite duration." — Jevoxs, Prin- 
ciples of Science, 

NOTE TO CHAPTER XIV. 

*' So far am I from accepting Kant's doctrine that space is 
a necessary form of thought, that I regard it as an accident, 
and an impediment to pure logical reasoning. Material ex- 
istences must exist in space, no doubt, but intellectual exist- 
ences may be neither in space nor out of space ; they may 
have no relation to space at all, just as space itself has no 
relation to time. For all that I can see, then, there may be 
intellectual existences to which both time and space are 
nullities. 

" Kow, among the most unquestionable rules of scientific 
method is that first law, that icJiatever pJienomenon is, is. We 



228 NOTES. 

must ignore no existence whatever ; we may variously inter- 
pret or explain its meaning and origin, but, if a phenomenon 
does exist, it demands some kind of explanation. If, then, 
there is to be competition for scientific recognition, the world 
without us must yield to the undoubted existence of the 
sjDirit within. Our own hopes and wishes and determinations 
are the most undoubted phenomena within the sphere of 
consciousness. If men do act, feel, and live as if they were 
not merely the brief products of a casual conjunction of 
atoms, but the instruments of a far-reaching purpose, are we 
to record all other phenomena and pass over these ? We in- 
vestigate the instincts of the ant and the bee and the beaver, 
and discover that they are led by an inscrutable agency to 
work towards a distant purpose. Let us be faithful to our 
scientific method, and investigate also those instincts of the 
human mind by which man is led to work as if the approval 
of a Higher Being were the aim of life." — Jeyoks. 



THE END. 



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esting than were his works on David and Elijah. The history has to do with 
the other apostles and with Christ, and the descriptions of the old scenes fa- 
miliar to all Bible readers are as interesting as a i^leasant tale pleasantly re- 
told can be. The author has treated his subject in a familiar and pleasing 
manner. — Brooklyn Eagle. 

DANIEL THE BELOVED. 12mo, Cloth, |1 50. 

The author has sought in this volume, while giving due prominence to 
those chapters of the history of Daniel which are particularly attractive to 
the young, to give special emphasis to the lessons which it teaches to people 
in business or public life. * * * In his illustrations of the application of Script- 
ural experiences to the exigencies of common life is the value of his work. 
* * * A useful manual of religion and morality, practical in application and 
earnest in iouQ,— Boston Globe, 

MOSES THE LAW-GIYER. 12mo, Cloth, $1 50. 

The incidents in the history of the great Hebrew law-giver are here turned 
to excellent account for the illustration of the doctrines of religious faith and 
the enforcement of the principles of practical morality. Dr. Taylor does not 
indulge in any learned disquisitions ; but with remarkable ingenuity and ef- 
fect applies the teachings of the history to the common interests and duties 
of life.— xY. Y. Tribune, 

PALT. THE MISSIONARY. 12mo, Cloth, $1 50. 

The crowning volume in a series any one of which might confer the dis- 
tinction on its author of being singularly and richly endowed for the office of 
preacher and minister in the Church. * * * It is a brilliant volume, replete with 
the rich discoveries of modern scholarship, and one that should be helpful 
both to faith and to unbelief.— T/?e Indejjendent, N. Y. 



Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 

■ Hakper & BROTnERS will send anij of the above works by mail, j^ostage 
prepaid^ to any 2)art of the United States^ on receipt of the j'rice. 



SAMUEL SMILES'S WOllKS. 



SELF-HELP; Tvitli Illustrations of Character, Conduct, aud 
Perseverance. New Edition, Revised and Enlarged. 12mo, 
Cloth, $1 00; 4to, Paper, 20 cents. 

CHARACTER. 12mo, Cloth, §1 00. 

THRIFT. 12mo, Cloth, §1 00. 

DUTY; with Illustrations of Courage, Patience, Endurance. 
12mo, Cloth, $1 00 ; 4to, Paper, 15 cents. 

ROUND THE WORLD; including a Residence in Victoria, 
and a Journey by Rail across North America. By a Boy. 
Edited by Samuel Smiles. Illustrated. 12ino, Cloth, $1 50. 

THE HUGUENOTS : their Settlements, Churches, and Indus- 
tries in England and Ireland. With an Appendix relating 
to the Huguenots in America. Crown 8vo, Cloth, §2 00. 

THE HUGUENOTS IN FRANCE AFTER THE REVOCA- 
TION OF THE EDICT OF NANTES ; with a Visit to the 
Country of the Vaudois. Crown 8vo, Cloth, $2 00. 

LIFE OF A SCOTCH NATURALIST : Thomas Edward, Asso- 
ciate of the Liunsean Society. Portrait and Illustrations. 
12mo, Cloth, $1 50. 

THE LIFE OF GEORGE STEPHENSON, and his Son, Rob- 
ert Stephenson ; comprising, also, a History of the Inven- 
tion and Introduction of the Railway Locomotive. With 
Portraits and numerous Illustrations. 8vo, Cloth, $3 00. 

ROBERT DICK, Baker of Thurso ; Geologist and Botanist. 
With a Portrait and numerous Illustrations. 12mo, Cloth, 

$1 50. 

JAMES NASMYTH, ENGINEER. An Autobiography. Edited 
by Samuel Smiles, LL.D. With a Portrait and numerous 
Illustrations. 12mo, Cloth, $1 50. Also, 4to, Paper, 20 cents. 



Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 

Harper & Brothers icill send anp of the above icorks "by mail, postage 
prepaid^ to any part of the United States, on receiptt of the price. 



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